THE  LIBRARY  > 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


CLASSICAL    GREEK    LITERATURE 


VOL.  I. 


PROPERTY 


ST.    LOLH 


A    HISTORY 


OF 


CLASSICAL  GREEK  LITERATURE 


BY  THE 


REV.  J.  P.  MAHAFFY,  M.A. 

FELLOW   AND    PROFESSOR   OF   ANCIENT   HISTORY,  TRINITY   COLLEGE,  DUBLIN 
AUTHOR    OF    "SOCIAL    LIFE   IN    GREECE"    "PROLEGOMENA    TO   ANCIENT    HISTORY"    ETC. 


Iff  TWO    VOLUMES 

VOL.  I. 
THE   POETS 

(WITH  AN  APPENDIX   ON   HOMER,  BY  PROF.  SAYCE) 


NEW   YORK 

HARPER  &   BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN   SQUARE 
1880 


AAAa  yap  I>VK  iv  rots  Aoyois  xpr)  TOVTOIS  TWV  «iriTr)8evjtoT  av  fifttiv  TO? 
icaii'oTJjTas,  tv  ots  ovre  irapd&o£ov  OVT'  aiuffrov  OUT*  efw  TWI/  vofiifofjifviav  ovSfv 
Ifto-riK  eiireii',  aAX'  ^Yeto-flai  TOUTOI'  \a.pie<TTa.TOi>,  os  af  TO»I'  Sieairap  /IC'I/UP  ev 
rai;  TUII'  aAAwv  Siaroicu?  adpoicrat  ra  irAetora  Svvri&fj  «cai  <^pacrai  xaAAiara 
Jrepi  aurii'. — ISOCRATES. 


PREFACE. 


A  HISTORY  of  Greek  Literature  has  become  almost  too 
great  a  task  for  any  single  man  to  accomplish  ade- 
quately. Quite  apart  from  the  first  absolute  requisite 
— a  thorough  intimacy  with  the  many  and  various  Greek 
authors  themselves — the  literature  of  commentary  and 
of  criticism  has  become  so  vast  and  complicated  that 
it  would  require  a  committee  of  scholars  to  grasp  and 
arrange  it  completely.  This  is  what  the  Germans  are 
actually  doing  in  various  periodicals.  Yet  it  is  very 
desirable  that  younger  students  should  have  from  a 
single  hand  some  conspectus  of  Greek  Literature  as 
a  whole,  of  its  life  and  growth,  and  of  the  mutual  rela- 
tions of  the  authors  whom  they  read  in  accidental  and 
irregular  order. 

The  admirable  work  of  O.  Miiller  supplied  this  want 
in  former  days ;  but  the  last  thirty-five  years  have 
brought  so  much  new  matter  to  light,  so  many  new 
controversies  have  arisen,  so  much  admirable  criticism 
has  revolutionised  our  old  notions,  that  it  became  im- 
perative either  to  re-edit  that  work  or  to  replace  it.  By 
the  aid  of  the  learned  and  careful  Donaldson,  it  had 
been  continued  (in  its  English  version)  so  as  to  emorace 
post-classical  literature  down  to  the  Byzantine  age. 
But  the  study  of  the  Alexandrian  and  post-Alexan- 


vi  PREFACE. 

drian  authors  is  rightly  excluded,  with  very  few  excep- 
tions, from  our  classical  education.  However  valuable 
they  may  be  for  their  matter,  nay,  even  for  their  tone 
and  sentiment,  they  are  not  read  as  classical,  and  there- 
fore may  fairly  be  excluded  from  a  book  which  professes 
to  keep  within  this  limit.  Strabo  and  Polybius,  Pau- 
sanias  and  Dionysius,  are  all  most  interesting  and  in- 
structive, and  the  last  is  necessary  to  any  proper 
appreciation  of  classical  oratory.  Plutarch  and  Lucian 
rank  higher,  and  may  be  read  with  pleasure  as  well  as 
profit ;  but,  nevertheless,  common  consent  has  denied 
them  a  place  among  the  authors  who  are  studied  for 
form.  Nay,  Aristotle  himself  can  only  be  called  a  clas- 
sical author  with  doubtful  propriety,  though  his  great- 
ness secures  him  a  place  in  every  treatment,  even  purely 
literary,  of  his  age. 

I  therefore  felt  justified  in  excluding  them  all,  save 
Aristotle,  from  a  book  intended  for  younger  students, 
though  admitting  exceptionally  a  few  poets  of  the  later 
age.  Those  who  desire  to  pursue  the  fortunes  of  Greek 
Literature  to  its  close  may  turn  either  to  the  excellent 
skeleton  sketch  in  Mr.  Jebb's  Primer,  or  to  the  third 
and  fourth  volumes  of  Nicolai's  Literatur-Geschichtc. 
Indeed,  the  third  volume  of  Miiller's  History  (by  Don- 
aldson) is  quite  sufficient  for  any  but  very  special 
students. 

The  order  in  which  the  authors  are  placed  has  been 
adopted  after  careful  consideration,  and  differs  fre- 
quently from  that  of  other  books.  I  will  not  say  that  it 
is  the  best,  but  will  claim  the  liberty  of  treating  writers 
of  the  same  epoch  in  the  way  which  I  find  most  conve- 
nient and  suggestive.  The  method  of  separating  the 
poetry  from  the  pro'se  is  now  generally  adopted  by  the 
Germans. 


PREFACE.  vil 

The  principle  followed  in  the  writing  of  the  Greek 
names  is  so  far  conservative  that  well-known  personages, 
such  as  ^Eschylus  and  Lycurgus,  are  not  disguised  from 
the  reader  as  Aischulos  and  Lukourgos.  These  great 
authors  have  become  household  names  among  us,  and 
it  is  better  to  insist  upon  their  familiar  English  form 
than  to  estrange  them  from  us  by  classical  purism. 
Even  in  the  lesser  and  more  unusual  names,  I  have  not 
introduced  a  k  except  when  the  pronunciation  was  at 
stake  :  thus  I  have  said  Critias,  but  also  Phokylides. 
Strange  names  like  Kephalos  have  been  kept  in  their 
original  form.  Of  course  opinions  will  vary  as  to  what 
is  a  familiar,  and  what  a  strange,  name.  If  I  have 
erred  in  my  judgment,  I  am  open  to  correction  on  a 
point  which  is  really  of  little  importance.  I  choose  to 
write  rythm  on  phonetic  principles,  and  wish  I  had  been 
bold  enough  to  write  ryme  and  retoric ;  but  no  word  is 
so  ugly  as  rhythm. 

The  question  of  obligations  to  others  is  more  serious, 
as  it  was  impossible  to  acknowledge  them  adequately ; 
I  have  borrowed  everything  freely  from  everybody,  and 
explicit  acknowledgments  would  have  largely  increased 
the  bulk  of  my  book  without  ever  being  complete. 
For  the  source  of  suggestion  has  often  escaped  me,  and 
I  may  have  assumed  as  my  own  what  had  been  un- 
consciously borrowed  from  others.  Again,  those  from 
whom  I  have  borrowed  most  are  those  who  are  criticised 
most  freely,  and  facts  are  often  taken  from  an  author  in 
order  to  controvert  his  own  inferences  from  them.  My 
constant  guides  and  teachers  have  been  Bernhardy  and 
Bergk,  in  their  unfinished  but  masterly  Histories  of 
Greek  Literature ;  then  for  the  tragic  poets  the  special 
works  of  Patin  (les  tragiques  grecs]  and  Klein  (Gesch. 
dcs  Dramas] ;  for  the  comedy,  besides  Klein,  Meineke's 


viii  PREFACE. 

History  and  Fragmenta  Comicorum  ;  for  the  orators,  the 
inestimable  Gesch.  der  attischen  Beredsamkeit  of  F.  Blass, 
and  Ferret's  Eloquence  d'Athenes,  &c.  For  the  historians 
we  have  as  yet  no  comprehensive  monograph  beyond 
Nicolai's  and  M tiller's  chapters.  The  special  editors 
of  the  greater  authors — Stein,  Classen,  Breitenbach, 
Schenkl,  &c.— and  C.  M  tiller  in  the  prefaces  to  his 
Fragmenta  Hisforicorum  Gracorum,  have,  however,  af- 
forded me  ample  material,  while  the  various  contribu- 
tions to  the  knowledge  of  all  the  authors  in  the  Philo- 
logus,Jakn's  Jahrbiicher,  Hermes,  Burstan's  Jakresbericht, 
the  Rheinisches  Museum,  and  the  Abhandlungen  and 
Sitzungsberichte  of  the  Berlin,  Leipzig,  Munich,  Dres- 
den, Gottingen,  Vienna,  and  other,  Academies,  have  been 
consulted  with  all  the  care  I  could  command.  But  it 
is  the  vastness  of  these  scattered  materials,  as  well  as 
of  the  many  Programs  and  other  monographs  with 
which  the  press  of  Germany  teems,  which  made  the  task 
of  writing  this  history  seem  like  the  labour  of  Sisyphus. 
I  need  not  here  gather  into  a. list  the  many  other  works 
cited  in  my  footnotes,  from  which  far  more  is  derived 
than  might  be  inferred  from  the  special  citation. 

I  quote  throughout  from  the  original  12  vol.  edition 
of  Grote's  History  of  Greece ;  in  other  works,  as  far  as 
possible,  from  the  newest  and  best  editions. 

The  bibliographical  paragraph  at  the  close  of  the 
treatment  of  each  author  does  not  affect  any  com- 
pleteness, but  merely  indicates  to  the  student  the  best 
MSS.,  the  princeps,  and  the  handiest  new  editions,  as 
well  as  such  intermediate  studies  on  the  text  as  may 
show  the  amount  of  interest  each  author  has  excited 
among  philologists. 

My  friends,  Mr.  GEORGE  MACMILLAN  and  Mr. 
KEENAN  (of  our  Library),  have  undertaken  the  labour  of 


PREFACE.  ix 

| 

revising  the  sheets,  for  which  I  could  spare  no  adequate 
leisure  without  indefinitely  postponing  publication  ;  and 
Mr.  BURY  has  compiled  for  me  the  Index,  which  will 
be  found,  I  believe,  thoroughly  satisfactory.  To  these 
gentlemen  I  here  tender  my  sincerest  thanks. 

Professor  SAYCE  has  put  me  under  still  deeper  obli- 
gations by  enriching  the  first  volume  with  a  learned 
appendix  on  the  Homeric  dialect,  in  which  all  the  latest 
researches  have  been  gathered  into  an  admirable  con- 
spectus. His  scepticism  concerning  Homer  is  more  ad- 
vanced than  mine,  but  his  learning  and  his  authority 
are  so  recognised  that  I  regard  it  as  a  great  honour  to 
have  his  name  associated  with  my  labours. 

TRINITY  COLLEGE,  DUBLIN  . 


CONTENTS 

OF 

THE    FIRST    VOLUME. 

(POETS.) 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    INTRODUCTION I 

II.    THE  TRACES   OF   POETRY   BEFORE   HOMER            ...  8 

III.    THE    HOMERIC     POEMS. — HISTORY    OF    THEIR    TRANSMIS- 
SION FROM   THE   EARLIEST  DAYS.  — EDITIONS,  SCHOLIA, 

ETC 22 

IV.    HISTORY    OF    THE     HOMERIC    CONTROVERSY     FROM     THE 

REVIVAL  OF   LEARNING  TO  THE   PRESENT   DAY    .            .  46 

V.    GENERAL  REMARKS   UPON   THE  ORIGIN  AND  THE  CHARAC- 
TER OF   THE   HOMERIC   POEMS 64 

VI.    THE    CYCLIC     POETS     AND   THE    BATRACHO-MYO-MACHIA. 

— JESOP  AND    BABRIUS 85 

VII.    THE     DIDACTIC     EPOS.        HESIOD  —  THE     EARLY      PHILO- 
SOPHERS       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .96 

VIII.    THE   HOMERIC   HYMNS   AND  TRIFLES           ....  129 

IX.    THE  LATER    HISTORY  OF   EPIC   POETRY      ....  144 

X.    THE   RISE  OF   PERSONAL   POETRY   AMONG  THE  GREEKS     .  155 

XI.    THE   PROGRESS  OF   PERSONAL   POETRY       .           .           .           .  1 86 

XII.    THE    PUBLIC   LYRIC    POETRY   OF   THE   GREEKS  .  .  .199 

XIII.    THE  AGE   OF   SIMONIDES   AND   PINDAR  2O6 


xii  CONTENTS   OF  THE  FIRST   VOLUME. 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV.  DRAMATIC  TENDENCIES  IN  THE  SIXTH  CENTURY.  THE 
RISE  OF  TRAGEDY  AND  SATYRIC  DRAMA.  THE  EXTER- 
NAL APPLIANCES  OF  GREEK  PLAYS  ....  230 

XV.    ^ESCHYLUS  .  .  . 248 

XVI.    SOPHOCLES 279 

XVII.    EURIPIDES 321 

XVIII.   THE   LESSER   AND   THE  LATER   TRAGIC   POETS     .  .  .  390 

XIX.    THE    ORIGIN   OF  COMEDY — THE   DORIC   SCHOOL,    EPICHAR- 

MUS,   SOPHRON — THEOCRITUS  AND   HIS  SCHOOL  .  .  397 

XX.    THE  OLD  ATTIC   COMEDY   UP  TO  ARISTOPHANES         .  .  421 

XXI.    ARISTOPHANES  .........  439 

XXII.    THE     HISTORY      OF     COMEDY      FROM      ARISTOPHANES      TO 

MENANDER 471 


APPENDICES. 

A.  ON   THE  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  GRF.EK   EPIC   POETS,    AND   MORE 

ESPECIALLY   OF   THE   ILIAD  AND   ODYSSEY     .  .  .      493 

B.  ON  THE  DATE  OF  THE  ODYSSEY  .  .  .  .  ~   .      522 


HISTORY 

OP 

GREEK     LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

§  i.  IT  has  been  the  usual  practice  with  historians  of  Greek 
Literature  to  begin  with  a  survey  of  the  character  and  genius  of  the 
race,  the  peculiar  features  of  the  language,  and  the  action  which 
physical  circumstances  have  produced  upon  the  development 
of  all  these  things.  In  the  case  of  many  German  books  these 
discussions  are  so  long  and  so  vague  that  the  student  is  wearied 
before  he  arrives  at  a  single  fact  in  literature.  It  is  furthermore 
necessary  for  the  proper  understanding  of  generalities  that  the 
reader  should  be  intimate  with  the  details  which  are  postponed 
to  a  later  part  of  the  book.  This  appears  to  me  so  unprac- 
tical a  method  that  I  have  abandoned  it,  and  will  not  attempt 
any  broad  survey  of  the  subject  in  a  work  devoted  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  details,  except  in  immediate  connection  with  these 
details.  In  the  present  day,  when  so  much  is  taught,  and  talked, 
and  read  about  Greek  history  and  art  and  poetry,  the  readers  of 
such  a  book  as  this  cannot  but  have  enough  acquaintance  with 
the  subject  to  permit  them  to  dispense  with  any  general  intro- 
duction. 

§  2.  When  we  come  to  inquire  what  were  the  earliest  pro- 
ducts of  Greek  Literature,  we  turn  of  course  to  Greek  poetry, 

VOL.  i. — i 


2  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.        CH.  I. 

for  it  is  a  well-known  law  of  human  progress,  that  long 
before  the  discovery  or  use  of  writing,  and  long  before  men 
care  to  read  or  hear  simple  prose  statements,  they  delight  in 
rythmical  song,  which  strikes  their  imagination  with  greater 
force,  and  is  more  easily  retained  in  their  memory.  This  may 
be  seen  among  us  in  the  education  of  children,  who  pass  in  a 
few  years  through  successive  stages  not  unlike  those  of  human- 
ity at  large  in  its  progress  from  mental  infancy  to  mature 
thought.  We  know  that  little  children  can  be  taught  to  repeat 
and  remember  rhymes  long  before  they  will  listen  to  the  simplest 
story  in  prose.  We  must  therefore  expect  to  find  the  earliest 
efforts  among  the  Greeks  in  their  poetry.  This  is  of  course 
the  case,  and  the  poems  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  are  mani- 
festly older,  even  as  they  stand,  than  any  other  books  the 
Greeks  have  left  us.  For  though  we  should  concede  to  certain 
modern  sceptics  that  the  arrangement,  or  bringing  into  large 
unities,  of  these  poems  was  not  completed  till  pretty  late  in 
their  history — even  this  extreme  theory  must  admit  and  re- 
quire that  the  materials  of  the  poems,  the  short  lays  from 
which  they  were  put  together,  are  older  than  any  other  species 
of  Greek  literature.  It  must  also  be  admitted  that  the  num- 
ber and  extent  of  these  shorter  poems,  which  may  have  been 
worked  into  what  we  call  Homer,  was  very  considerable,  and 
that  only  a  very  small  portion  of  this  literature  has  been  trans- 
mitted to  us. 

When,  therefore,  we  go  back  as  far  as  we  can,  in  our  search 
for  the  earliest  specimens  of  Greek  poetry,  we  find  ourselves  in 
the  presence  of  a  very  large  body  of  what  is  called  Epic  poetry, 
all  of  which  in  early  days  passed  under  the  name  of  Homer. 
The  noblest  and  best  of  this  poetry  is  in  the  opinion  of  all 
critics,  ancient  and  modern,  the  Iliad ;  a  poem  of  great  length, 
of  a  definite  plan  and  purpose,  and  composed  with  a  perfect 
mastery  both  of  style  and  language.  The  characters  are  pretty 
consistently  drawn,  and  our  general  impression  of  the  whole 
work  suggests  (a)  that  its  author  was  one  master  hand,  using 
both  the  legends  of  his  people,  and  his  own  studies  in  human 
nature,  to  produce  a  dramatic  picture  not  since  surpassed 
or  perhaps  equalled.  If  this  be  so,  we  may  safely  assert,  tRat 


CH.  I.          GRADUAL   GROWTH  OF  POETRY.  3 

such  a  piece  of  work  cannot  be  the  first  hesitating  attempt  of 
any  people,  however  gifted,  at  literary  composition. 

But  throughout  the  various  shorter  episodes  of  which  the 
Iliad  may  be  composed,  there  is  such  a  harmony  in  the  drawing 
of  the  various  heroes  who  appear  on  the  scene,  that  (V)  even  if 
one  great  master  did  not  sketch  them  all,  they  must  have  been 
recognised  types,  which  had  long  since  assumed  a  definite  and 
fixed  shape  for  a  school  or  series  of  poets,  each  of  whom  was 
able  to  express  this  type  with  adequate  consistency.  Either 
theory  implies  long  and  gradual  preparation,  many  lesser 
attempts  which  have  failed,  and  many  faulty  pictures  which  have 
disappeared,  because  they  departed  from  the  once  fixed  and  re- 
cognised features  of  known  characters. 

§  3.  The  ambitious  and  elaborate  structure  of  these  epics 
will  clearly  appear  when  we  come  to  discuss  them  more 
fully  in  detail.  It  is  here  sufficient  to  insist  that  such  com- 
positions can  in  no  wise  represent  the  first  attempts  of  the 
nation  to  frame  a  literature.  In  all  the  other  fine  arts,  which 
the  Greeks  cultivated  with  equal  success,  they  began  with  rude 
and  even  childish  efforts,  which  possessed  no  beauty,  and  were 
evidently  the  work  of  artists  who  had  as  yet  obtained  but 
little  control  over  the  material  with  which  they  worked.  We 
have  still  remaining  archaic  specimens  of  architecture  and  of 
sculpture,  which  strike  us  as  almost  ludicrous ;  nor  do  the 
various  accounts  of  early  painting  and  music  handed  down  to  us 
leave  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  these  arts  went  through  a  similarly 
gradual  development.  The  use  of  harmony  in  music  was,,  a 
late  discovery,  after  many  generations  had  been  content  with 
an  accompaniment  played  note  for  note  with  the  voice.  The 
laws  of  perspective  were  not  made  out  and  introduced  into 
painting  until  the  exigencies  of  theatrical  scene-painting  had  re- 
acted upon  the  higher  branches  of  the  art.  Thus  everywhere 
in  the  history  of  Greek  culture  we  find  the  same  rude  begin- 
nings and  gradual  growth  in  grace  and  power.  It  is  only  a 
false  and  random  metaphor  when  older  critics  speak  of  epic 
poetry  springing  like  Athene  full  grown  and  in  panoply  from 
the  brain  of  a  single  Homer. 


4  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.        CH.  I. 

§  4.  But  if  the  Iliad  is  far  too  great  and  too  perfect  for  a 
first  attempt  in  literature,  its  vast  superiority  over  what  went 
before  is,  on  the  other  hand,  the  main  cause  of  our  being  so  badly 
informed  about  earlier  and  ruder  efforts.  When  any  people  are 
feeling  their  way  in  art,  it  is  but  natural  that  the  first  work  of 
real  genius  should  eclipse  and  supersede  all  its  rivals,  so  as  to 
become  the  model  for  succeeding  ages.  The  great  popu- 
larity and  thorough  nationality  of  Homer  not  only  made  him 
supplant  earlier  epics,  but  even  made  epic  poetry  supplant  the 
earlier  and  simpler  forms  of  poetry  which  had  existed  among 
the  people  ;  and  so  for  some  centuries  in  Greek  Literature  we 
hear  of  nothing  but  epic  poets,  hexameter  verse,  and  legendary 
subjects. 

§  5.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  earliest  forms  of 
song  among  the  Greeks,  as  among  all  other  people,  were  not 
epic  but  lyric.  The  very  Linus  song  mentioned  by  Homer, 
and  the  choral  dances  accompanied  by  singing,  as  well  as  the 
vintage  songs,  and  other  such  national  poetry — all  these  were 
distinctly  of  a  lyric  character.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  these,  though  eclipsed  by  the  splendour  of  epic  poetry,  ever 
ceased  to  exist,  and  we  must  rather  conceive  that  the  feelings 
of  the  common  people  satisfied  themselves  in  these  songs, 
while  the  nobles  sat  in  state  at  their  feasts,  and  even  paid 
?  bard  to  compose  and  recite  the  praise  of  gods  and  men. 
But  it  was  not  till  this  more  artificial  and  elaborate  school  had 
worked  itself  out  along  with  the  society  which  produced  and 
festered  it,  it  was  not  till  the  old  aristocracies  and  kingdoms  had 
broken  down,  and  the  epic  poets  became  shallow  and  pedantic, 
that  the  lyric  instincts  began  to  assert  themselves  in  literature. 
Then  it  was  that  great  men  went  back  to  the  people,  who 
alone  can  originate  a  really  fresh  and  lasting  current  in  poetry, 
and  borrowed  from  them  the  various  forms  of  iambic,  elegiac, 
and  lyric  proper  which  form  the  so-called  lyric  age  of  poetry  in 
Greece. 

It  is  a  great  and  general  mistake  to  set  down  this  lyric 
poetry  as  the  invention  or  product  of  a  later  age  ;  it  is  merely 
the  revival,  and  the  drawing  from  obscurity,  of  the  oldest 
form  of  Greek  national  song,  modified  and  varied  no  doubt  by 


CH.  i.  PERIODICAL  RETURNS   TO  FOLK-SONG.  5 

literary  genius,  but  with  its  root  deep-set  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people. l 

When  in  process  of  time  this  lyric  poetry  became  in  its  turn 
frigid  and  over-wrought,  when  it  passed  into  the  pay  of  despots 
or  Olympic  victors,  and  the  people  felt  the  want  of  some  more 
national  literature,  the  great  poets  of  Athens  again  went  back 
to  the  people.  They  adopted  from  the  rude  merry-makings  of 
Dionysus  and  the  boisterous  vintage-feasts  the  popular  elements 
of  dramatic  poetry,  which  when  ennobled  by  the  heritage  of 
epic  and  lyric  forms  took  its  place  as  the  last  and  perhaps  the 
greatest  branch  in  the  rich  growth  of  Greek  national  life.  For 
from  this  day  onward,  and  with  a  reading  public,  a  national  efface- 
ment  and  decay,  a  political  ruin,  a  social  decadence  made  parti- 
cularism and  not  nationalism  the  feature  of  Greek  poetry.  Yet 
even  when  the  centre  of  gravity  of  Greek  culture  had  passed 
from  Hellas  to  the  East,  Theocritus  and  his  school  found  in 
Sicilian  pastoral  life  a  pure  vein  of  gold,  which  has  made 
his  bucolics,  written  among  the  bookworms  of  the  sandhills 
of  Egypt,  an  independent  and  fresh  development  in  Greek 
Literature.  These  songs  had  existed  in  the  uplands  of  Sicily,  as 
we  know,  for  centuries.  They  had  attracted  the  genius  of  the 
great  Stesichorus,  who  had  treated  some  of  their  pastoral  stories 
with  his  elaborate  art.  But  the  day  of  bucolic  poetry  had  not 
come,  or  rather  the  great  lyric  outburst  was  just  then  carrying 
with  it  all  the  higher  spirits  of  the  nation ;  and  so  the  attempt 
of  Stesichorus,  though  known  and  approved,  did  not  find  any 
followers. 

§  6.  This  brief  sketch  of  the  periods  of  Greek  poetry  is 
drawn  here  only  so  far  as  to  make  it  appear  that  all  the  so- 
called  new  kinds  of  verse,  all  the  revolutions  in  taste  which  are 
so  definite  and  plainly  dated  in  Greek  literary  history,  were 
simply  reversions  to  the  only  true  and  pure  source  of  inspiration 
in  old  days — the  untutored  songs  of  the  people.  It  is  in  the 

1  This  reasonable  theory,  based  on  the  nature  of  things,  and  supported 
by  good  scholars,  such  as  Theodor  Bergk,  is  rejected  by  Bernhardy  (Hist. 
Lit.  vol.  ii.  pp.  576,  589,  602)  merely  because  he  thinks  our  positive 
evidence  for  it  insufficient.  I  feel  bound  to  note  his  disapproval,  though  it 
does  not  shake  my  conviction. 


6  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.        CH.  i. 

nature  of  any  cultivated  school  of  poetry  to  grow  gradually 
more  laboured  and  artificial,  until  at  last  it  ceases  to  appeal  to 
the  public  taste,  and  becomes  a  mere  exercise  and  amusement 
for  the  student  and  for  learned  audiences.  This  was  plainly 
the  case  with  the  later  epic  poets  who  were  called  Cyclical,  and 
whose  laboured  accounts  of  the  wars  of  gods,  giants,  and  by- 
gone men,  roused  the  ire  and  fed  the  satire  of  Xenophanes 
and  his  contemporaries.  It  is  perhaps  not  so  easily  proved, 
and  will  not  be  so  readily  admitted,  that  the  lyric  poetry  of 
Pindar  and  Simonides,  which  was  eclipsed  by  the  rise  of 
tragic  poetry,  showed  plain  traces  of  the  same  defects.  The 
epitaphs  of  Simonides  are  indeed  very  beautiful,  clear,  and 
devoted  to  great  national  subjects  ;  but  these  can  hardly  be 
called  a  separate  school  of  poetry,  and  were  written  with  equal 
beauty  and  effect  by  many  poets  not  exclusively  lyric.  What 
really  damaged  the  national  position  of  Simonides,  with  all  his 
merits,  was  the  feeling  that  he  was  a  poet  for  pay — a  poet  of 
courts  and  despots,  at  a  time  when  courts  and  despots  were 
rapidly  passing  out  of  all  favour  and  becoming  the  objects  of 
a  great  national  hate.  The  poetry  of  Pindar  laboured  under 
the  same  disadvantages.  He  celebrated,  indeed,  victories  at 
the  national  games,  but  celebrated  them  for  pay,  and  was 
ready  to  write  for  pay  in  honour  of  anybody — of  Sicilian  tyrants 
or  Corinthian  courtesans.  There  was,  moreover,  strongly 
marked  in  Pindar's  poetry  another  quality,  which  we  do  not 
meet  in  the  extant  fragments  of  Simonides,  and  which  heralds 
the  decadence  of  lyric  poetry — I  mean  that  obscurity  and 
elaborate  richness  which  made  him  quite  unintelligible  to 
the  masses.  Literary  men  studied  him,  and  admired  him  for 
these  bold  and  daring  flights  ;  but  the  mass  of  the  Greek  public 
had  forgotten  him  and  laid  him  aside  in  the  very  next  genera- 
tion, as  we  hear  from  Cratinus.  Of  course  lyric  poetry  could 
not  die  in  a  moment ;  but  even  as  epic  poetry  had  been 
transformed  rather  than  destroyed  in  the  odes  of  Stesichorus 
and  Pindar,  and  in  the  dialogues  of  tragedy,  so  lyric  poetry 
passed  into  the  humbler  sphere  of  being  the  handmaid  of  the 
drama,  and  filling  up  the  gaps  in  the  action  of  the  piece. 
Whatever  rmrelv  Ivrical  drama  and  dithyrambs  existed  were 


CH.  i.  LATER  LITERARY  REVIVALS.  7 

never  successful,  and  have  left  only  faint  traces  in  the  history 
of  literature. 

§  7.  The  later  fortunes  and  decay  of  tragedy,  which  occurred 
in  a  very  advanced  civilisation  and  among  a  reading  public,  are 
a  more  complicated  history.  When  the  majority  of  people  begin 
to  read,  poetry  loses  its  hold  upon  the  public,  and  the  prose 
writer,  who  composes  with  greater  simplicity  and  less  labour, 
at  last  obtains  an  advantage  over  his  rival  the  poet,  who  is  put 
into  competition  with  all  the  older  poets  now  circulating 
among  a  more  learned  public.  It  is  here  sufficient  to  repeat, 
as  an  additional  illustration  of  the  principle,  that  although  in 
the  Alexandrine  epoch  there  were  learned  and  even  brilliant 
imitations  of  all  species  of  old  Greek  poetry — the  epics  of 
Apollonius,  the  elegiacs  of  Callimachus,  the  lyrics  of  a  false 
Anacreon,  the  tragedies  of  the  Pleiad — one  kind  only  of  the 
varied  products  of  that  wonderfully  prolific  and  greatly  under- 
rated age  has  held  its  place  among  all  the  critics  and  admirers 
of  pure  Greek  poetry.  This  is  the  bucolic  poetry  of  Theocritus, 
imitated,  not  from  earlier  literature,  but  from  the  people's  songs, 
from  the  shepherds'  pipe  and  ditty,  from  the  fresh  feelings  of 
untutored  hearts.  It  is  indeed  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present 
work,  but  it  is  worthy  of .  suggestion,  that  the  history  of  the  fine 
arts  generally,  nay  even  the  political  history  of  the  world,  shows 
perpetual  examples  of  the  same  principle.  The  tendency  of 
all  human  invention  is  to  become  conventional,  then  cramped, 
and  then  effete.  It  is  to  be  revived  only  by  breaking  with 
venerable  traditions,  and  going  back  to  nature,  to  natural  men 
and  natural  things,  for  new  inspiration. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  TRACES   OF  POETRY  BEFORE  HOMER. 

§  8.  WHEN  we  endeavour  to  discover  the  preliminary  stages 
through  which  Greek  poetry  reached  the  perfect  condition 
which  produced  the  great  epics,  we  find  ourselves  reduced  to 
doubtful  inferences  and  conjectures.  The  Homeric  poems 
themselves  tell  us  almost  nothing  on  the  subject.  Apart 
from  the  two  bards  in  the  Odyssey — Demodocus  at  the 
Phseacian  court,  and  Phemius  among  the  suitors — who  are  dis- 
tinctly epic  singers  of  the  same  style  and  class  as  the  author  or 
authors  of  our  remaining  epics,  we  have  only  an  allusion  to 
one  person,  Thamyris,  and  to  various  choral  songs  of  a  lyric 
kind,  sung  at  marriages  and  vintage  scenes,  or  on  other  occasions 
of  great  grief  or  joy.  We  have  also  several  earlier  legends  men- 
tioned in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  that  they  had  already  been 
treated  by  bards  such  as  Phemius  and  Demodocus. 

§  9.  The  facts  which  may  with  certainty  be  inferred  from 
these  allusions  are :  (i)  that  poets  were  common  before  the  com- 
position even  of  the  Iliad,  or  oldest  of  the  poems  ;  (2)  that 
the  earlier  poems  were  both  lyric  and  epic  in  character ;  and  (3) 
that  there  existed  a  feeling  of  rivalry,  if  not  regular  contests,  in 
poetry.  These  latter  are  indeed  openly  asserted  to  have  taken 
place  in  the  old  account  of  the  contest  between  Homer  and 
Hesiod,  but  are  implied  also  in  the  reference  to  Thamyris 
(B  594),'  'who  boasted  that  he  would  conquer  even  were  the 
Muses,  the  daughters  of  Zeus,  to  contend  against  him ;  but 
they  in  anger  made  him  blind  (njpoi'),  and  took  away  his 

1  The  books  of  the  Iliad  are  indicated  in  capitals,  those  of  the  Odyssey 
in  small  letters. 


CH.  ir.  HERODOTUS   ON  EARLY  GREEK  POETRY,    y 

godlike  song,  and  caused  him  to  forget  his  cunning  upon  the 
lute.' 

This  famous  passage  occurs,  it  is  true,  in  the  Catalogue, 
which  is  perhaps  the  most  suspicious  part  of  the  Iliad.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  occurs  in  the  account  of  the  forces  of 
Nestor  from  Pylus,  and  there  is  evidence  that  many  other 
poetic  legends  were  in  vogue  about  this  kingdom — legends 
perpetually  cited  in  the  reminiscences  of  the  aged  Nestor  him- 
self, whose  very  age  seems  to  imply  that  he  had  been  the  sub- 
ject of  earlier  ballads.  This  justifies  the  opinion  that  the  men- 
tion of  Thamyris  '  is  really  old,  and  points  to  the  age  before  the 
composition  of  the  Iliad.  But,  unfortunately,  there  is  no  hint 
as  to  the  nature  of  his  poetry.  We  cannot  tell  whether  he  com- 
posed lyric  pieces  such  as  the  old  dirges  and  marriage-songs,  or 
whether  he  was  an  epic  singer  like  Demodocus,  or  whether, 
again,  he  was  an  author  of  that  early  religious  poetry,  which 
was  by  later  writers  ascribed  to  the  age  before  Homer. 

After  the  days  of  Herodotus,  we  hear  constantly  of  this 
religious  poetry,  which  was  of  a  mystical  or  symbolical  cha- 
racter, and  certainly  of  a  very  different  type  from  the  worldly 
Homer.  But  as  to  its  antiquity,  our  authorities  are  not 
very  encouraging.  The  first  and  most  important  is  Herodotus, 
who  says  in  a  famous  passage  (ii.  50-4)  in  which  he  dis- 
cusses the  origin  and  names  of  the  Hellenic  gods  :  '  Whence 
the  gods  severally  sprang,  whether  or  not  they  had  existed  from 
all  eternity,  what  forms  they  bore — these  are  questions  of  which 
the  Greeks  knew  nothing  till  the  other  day,  so  to  speak.  For 
Homer  and  Hesiod  were  the  first  to  compose  Theogonies, 
and  give  the  gods  their  epithets,  to  allot  to  them  their  several 
offices  and  occupations,  and  describe  their  forms  ;  and  they 
lived  about  400  years  before  my  time,  and  not  more,  as  I 
believe.  As  for  the  poets  who  are  thought  by  some  to  be 
earlier  than  these,  they  are,  in  my  judgment,  decidedly  later.' 
And  he  adds  presently  :  '  What  I  have  said  of  Homer  and 
Hesiod  is  my  own  opinion,  and  not  borrowed  from  the 
priestesses  of  Dodona.' 

I  should  consider  this  judgment  as  to  the  relative  age  of  the 

1  Also  called  Thamyras,  especially  in  a  comedy  of  Antiphanes. 

T* 


io  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE       CH.  II. 

old  Orphic  and  other  religious  poems  (to  which  he  clearly 
alludes)  as  of  the  greatest  weight,  were  it  not  evident  that 
Herodotus  is  here  sustaining  a  favourite  theory  of  his  own,  viz. 
that  almost  all  the  Greek  religion,  and  especially  all  the  mystic 
part  of  it,  was  borrowed  from  Egypt.  Thus  he  says  (ii.  81)  : 
'  Here  their  (the  Egyptian)  practice  resembles  the  rites  which  are 
called  Bacchic  and  Orphic,  but  which  are  in  reality  Egyptian  and 
Pythagorean  ; '  and  it  was  a  necessary  part  of  this  theory  that 
these  rites,  and  the  poems  belonging  to  them,  shouM  not  be  very 
ancient.  I  do  not,  therefore,  think  that  the  sceptical  judgment 
of  Herodotus,  which  he,  with  his  usual  honesty,  confesses  to  be 
a  peculiar  opinion  of  his  own,  can  be  here  decisive.1  The  fre- 
quent poetical  allusions  of  Euripides  to  a  collection  of  Orphic 
poems  of  pious  and  philosophic  import  can,  on  the  other  hand, 
afford  no  secure  evidence  of  their  antiquity,  for  we  know  that  the 
school  of  Onomacritus,  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  added  con- 
siderably to  the  old  religious  poems,  if  it  did  not  forge  them 
wholesale.  But  the  very  fact  of  the  forging  of  the  name  of 
Orpheus,  Musaeus,  and  others  proves  clearly  the  antiquity 
of  these  names,  and  that'  the  poetry  ascribed  to  them  was 
of  a  character  quite  different  from  that  of  the  Epos.  The  very 
frequent  allusions  of  Plato,  on  the  other  hand,  who  even  in 
three  places  quotes  the  words  of  Orpheus,2  show  clearly  that  he 
accepted  Orpheus  and  Musaeus,  whom  he  usually  co-ordinates, 
as  ancient  masters  of  religious  song,  and  on  a  par  with  Homer 
and  Hesiod.  This  general  acceptance  of  Orpheus  as  a  real  per- 
sonage, with  no  less  frequent  suspicions  as  to  the  genuineness 
of  the  current  Orphic  books,  appears  in  other  Greek  writers  ; 
e.g.  Aristotle3  cites  the  so-called  Orphic  poems,  just  as  he  cites 
the  so-called  Pythagorean  books.  Apart  from  these  casual 
allusions,  our  really  explicit  authorities  are  the  antiquaries  of 

'  We  might  just  as  well  accept  the  almost  unanimous  verdict  of  older 
tradition,  and  believe  the  Greek  race  to  be  autochthonous,  and  their  civili- 
sation perfectly  original ;  whereas  their  eastern  origin  can  be  clearly  de- 
monstrated, quite  apart  from  the  discoveries  of  Herodotus  and  his  school, 
from  the  surer  evidence  of  architecture  and  the  plastic  arts,  and  from  the 
results  of  comparative  Linguistic. 

2  Crat.  402  B,  Phikb.  66  C,  Legg.  669  D. 

8  De  Anima,  i.  5,  410  b  ;  and  elsewhere 


CH.  II.  THE  PELASGIANS.  il 

later  days,  to  whom  we  owe  almost  all  the  definite  knowledge 
we  possess.  Pausanias,  in  particular,  not  only  speaks  constantly 
of  these  poets,  but  refers  to  some  of  their  hymns,  which  he 
had  heard,  and  it  is  he  and  Strabo  who  afford  us  the  materials 
for  constructing  a  general  theory  about  them. 

§  10.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  two  races  which  tradition 
consistently  asserts  to  have  been  the  first  civilisers  of  Greece 
are  known  in  history  as  barbarians — the  Pelasgi  and  the  Thra- 
cians.  Herodotus  (i.  57)  found  remnants  of  the  Pelasgi  still 
living  at  Creston,  Scylace  and  Placia,  and  he  characterises  their 
language  as  that  of  barbarians.  The  savagery  of  the  Thracians 
was  proverbial  all  through  Hellenic  history,  and  yet  among  the 
various  obscure  and  doubtful  statements  of  the  legends,  these 
are  the  only  neighbouring  peoples  of  which  we  can  affirm  with 
tolerable  certainty  that  they  were  the  forerunners  of  the  Hellenes 
in  culture.  With  the  Pelasgi  we  are  not  much  concerned. 
They  were  great  builders  and  great  reclaimers  of  land.  They 
settled  all  over  Greece,  and  especially  in  such  rich  plains  as 
those  of  Thessaly  and  of  Argos.  But  their  literary  character 
is  nowhere  attested.  Nor  have  we  remaining  any  certain  trace 
of  their  language,  save  the  words  Argos  and  Larissa,  which 
(as  interpreted  to  mean  plain  and  fortress)  point  to  these  very 
tastes.  They  seem  to  have  been  a  peace-loving,  quiet  people  ; 
and  if  they  built  everywhere  great  forts,  such  as  was  the 
Pelasgic  ring  wall  of  the  Acropolis  at  Athens,  they  were  not, 
like  the  Leleges  or  Minyans,  famed  for  pillage  and  war. 
They  must  have  been  a  settled  and  agricultural  race,  opposed 
to  the  roving  pirates,  whom  they  doubtless  dreaded. 

One  fact  connected  with  literature,  and  one  only,  may  be 
traced  to  them.  It  was  they  who  received  from  the  Phoenicians 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  adapted  from  the  Egyptian  hieratic 
character  by  these  traders.  The  varying  appellations  of  Cad- 
mean,  Phoenician,  and  Pelasgic  letters  seem  clearly  to  attest  this. 
Despite  Herodotus'  condemnation  of  their  language,  they  were 
doubtless  of  Aryan  descent 1  ;  and  one  thing  is  clear,  that  the 
change  of  Greece  from  its  Pelasgic  to  its  Hellenic  state  was  no 

1  Emile  Burnouf  believes  them  to  have  been  akin  to  the  present  Alba- 
nians, whom  later  invasions  have  reinstated  in  many  parts  of  Greece. 


12  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  II. 

sudden  revolution  or  conquest,  but  a  gradual  absorption  of  the 
older  and  weaker  in  the  new.  The  most  venerable  elements  in 
the  Hellenic  religion  were  adopted  from  them,  and  there  is  no 
nobler  invocation  in  the  Iliad  than  that  of  Achilles  to  the  old 
Pelasgic  Zeus  of  Dodona  that  ruled  in  the  heavens.  '  This  ap- 
peal agrees  well  with  the  interesting  notice  of  Herodotus,  that 
they  worshipped  their  gods,  but  without  names  or  divers 
functions,  in  simple  and  silent  adoration.  Hence  it  came  that 
they  were  reverenced  by  the  Romans  for  their  religion. 

§  1  1.  The  legends  about  the  Thracians  are  of  quite  a  different 
order.  This  remarkable  people  appear  from  the  notices  of  the 
Iliad  to  have  been  allied  rather  to  the  Phrygians  than  to  the 
western  Greeks.  The  Phrygians  have  been  proved  from  the 
extant  words  of  the  language  to  be  not  only  Aryans,  but  Aryans 
of  the  European  branch  ;  and  thus  we  can  conceive  an  early 
culture  among  the  great  Phrygio-Thracian  tribes  extending  to 
the  borders  of  Thessaly.  However  this  may  be,  we  hear  of  a 
school  of  Thracian  minstrels,  of  whom  Orpheus  is  the  best 
known  name,  which  is  associated  with  the  district  of  Pieria  —  a 
region  not  very  clearly  denned,  and  apparently  moving  gradually 
southward,  till  we  find  it  about  the  slopes  of  Mount  Olympus.2 
These  singers  were  specially  devoted  to  the  worship  of  the 
Muses  —  three  goddesses  who  are  always  associated  with  wells 
and  water-  springs,  and  who  were  the  special  patronesses  and 
inspirers  of  poetry.3  There  are  traces  of  these  Thracian  bards 

1  Cf.  II  233.     ZeS  &va,  A(aS<avai€,  Tle\affyiKe,  Ti}X6di  valuv, 
eSeW  Svcrxfif-fpov  K.  r.A. 


2  It  has  been  well  pointed  out  by  many  scholars  that  the  legendary 
Thracians  of  Attica  and  the  historical  Thracians  have  nothing  in  common, 
and  that  not  impossibly  the  mythical  Thracians  were  pure  Ionian  Greeks 
(cf.  Petersen  in  Ersch  und  Gruber's  Encyclop.  vol.  Ixxxv.  p.  271)  ;  at  all 
events,  they  were  a  distinct  people,  with  a  distinct  religion  and  polity. 

3  The  names  for  them  at  Helicon  were,  in  Pausanias'  day,  fj.v-fnj.-i],  neter-ft, 
and  aoiS-fi  ;    at  Delphi,   according   to   Plutarch,  \nra.Ti\,   /ue'mj,  and  vyr-fi, 
from  the  principal  strings  of  the  lyre.     The  three  Charites  of  Orchomenus 
seem  to  correspond  to  them  (Paus.  ix.  35).     In  later  days  the  number  was 
nine,   and  the  names  quite  different.      Bergk  absurdly  suggests  the  Lydian 
HMV  =  water,  as  the  origin  of  MoO(ra,  which  is  rather  =  uovr-ja,  and  con- 
nected with  the  root  of  UOI/TIS. 


CH.  n.  THE  THRACIANS.  13 

down  through  the  mountains  of  Phocis  to  Delphi  and  round 
about  Parnassus ;  and  still  more  certainly  are  they,  and  with 
them  the  worship  of  the  Muses,  associated  with  the  northern 
slopes  of  Helicon.  There  is  no  range  through  all  Greece  so 
rich  in  springs  and  tumbling  brooks  as  the  northern  slopes  of 
Helicon,  and  men  might  well  imagine  it  a  favourite  abode  of  god- 
desses, who  loved  this  most  speaking  voice  in  nature.  It  is  here 
that  the  author  of  the  Theogony,  ascribed  to  Hesiod — possibly 
Hesiod  himself — fixes  their  abode,  when  he  calls  them  to  come 
from  Pieria  at  the  opening  of  his  didactic  poem.  The  estab- 
lishment of  the  worship  of  the  Muses,  which  the  Thracian  school 
had  introduced  from  Pieria,  is  perfectly  demonstrated  by  its 
persistence  up  to  the  days  of  Hesiod,  and  the  so-called 
didactic  and  genealogical  epics. 

Attic  legends  seem  to  indicate  that  the  Thracians  were  not 
mere  singers,  and  that  they  sought  to  extend  their  influence 
still  further.  The  legend  of  the  war  of  Eumolpus,  the  Thracian 
warrior,  king  and  bard,  against  Erechtheus,  king  of  Athens,  im- 
plies that  the  Thracians  extended  their  power  from  the  slopes 
of  Helicon  across  the  glades  and  gorges  of  Cithaeron  to  its  last 
spur — the  citadel  of  Eleusis.  This  approach  so  threatened 
Athens,  that  the  legends  represent  Erechtheus  engaged  in  a 
desperate  struggle  with  Eumolpus,  and  victorious  only  by 
the  aid  of  human  sacrifices — the  voluntary  death  of  his  own 
daughters.  This  legend,  now  glorified  by  Mr.  Swinburne's 
splendid  drama,  may  have  real  facts  underlying  it ;  and  it  is,  in 
any  case,  in  consonance  with  the  other  hints  collected  by  Strabo 
and  Pausanias.  Certain  it  is  that  the  mysteries  of  Demetei 
and  Persephone,  celebrated  by  the  Athenians  at  Eleusis  all 
through  history,  were  under  the  special  direction  of  the  clan  of 
the  Eurnolpidas,  who  professed  to  trace  their  origin  to  this 
Thracian  ancestor.  His  name,  like  that  of  Musseus,  shows 
clearly  enough  his  connection  with  the  old  worship  of  the 
Muses,  and  their  poetic  inspiration. 

§  1 2.  Our  oldest  direct  evidence  for  Orpheus  is  the  fact  that 
in  Peisistratus'  day  his  name  was  sufficiently  venerable  to  produce 
and  protect  extensive  forgeries  ;  but  it  is  probable  that  Hera- 
cleitus,  who  could  hardly  have  been  deceived  by  Onomacritus, 


14  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  II. 

believed  not  only  in  Orpheus,  but  in  some  of  the  extant  writings 
attributed  to  him.1  The  mention  of  his  poems  by  Pausanias  is 
very  interesting.  '  Whoever,'  says  he,  'has  made  a  critical 
study  of  poetry,  knows  that  the  hymns  of  Orpheus  are  each 
composed  in  the  briefest  form,  and  are  altogether  very  few  in 
number.  The  Lycomidae  (an  Attic  clan)  know  them  and  sing 
them  in  accompaniment  to  the  ceremonies  (of  the  mysteries). 
In  elegance  they  would  rank  second  after  the  hymns  of  Homer, 
at  any  rate,  but  they  are  more  highly  honoured  than  these  on 
account  of  their  religious  spirit.'  In  another  place  (i.  14,  3), 
he  distinctly  rejects  poems  attributed  to  Orpheus,  and  doubtfully 
to  Musaeus.  This  Musseus  was  supposed  to  have  been  a  pupil 
or  successor  to  Orpheus. 

There  are  other  names  which  Pausanias  considers  still 
older — Linus,  the  personification  of  the  Linus  song  mentioned 
by  Homer,  and  from  early  times  identified  more  or  less  with  the 
Adonis  song  of  the  Phoenicians  and  the  Maneros  of  the  Egyp- 
tians. After  Linus  came  the  Lycian  Olen,  the  oldest  composer  of 
Greek  hymns  known  (Paus.  ix.  27,  2),  whose  style  was  adopted 
by  Orpheus,  and  also  by  Pamphos,  the  oldest  hymn-poet  among 
the  Athenians.  A  hymn  of  this  Pamphos  to  Eros  was  sung  at 
the  mysteries  by  the  Lycomidae,  along  with  those  of  Orpheus. 
Several  of  his  hymns  are  referred  to  by  Pausanias.  With  the 
old  Delphic  contests  in  music  and  poetry  were  connected 
Chrysothemis,  Philammon,  and  his  son  Thamyris,  who  were 
said  to  be  the  first  three  victors  recorded  at  these  contests. 
Orpheus  and  Musa;us  were  distinctly  reported  to  have  ab- 
stained from  contending,  as  being  of  too  great  fame,  and  also 
connected  with  a  different  worship.2  The  names  of  Bakis  and 

1  Bergk  calls  attention  to  Euripides'  Alcesiis  (v.  967)  and  the  scholia. 
Cf.  for  the  following  statement,  Pausanias,  ix.  30,  12. 

2  The  various  relations  or  genealogies  of   these  poets  referred  to  by 
Fausanias,  Diodorus,  and  Suidas  are  irreconcilable,  and  are,  indeed,  not 
worth  reconciling.     Some  called  Thamyris  the  eighth  poet  before  Homer, 
some  the  sixth.     Charops,  CEagrus,  Orpheus,  Musaeus,  Eumolpus,  Philam- 
mon, Thamyris,  is  one  suggested  order.     The  object  of  these  legends  is 
various :  first,  to  account  for  the  transference  of  the  mysteries  and  their 
poetical  rites  from  Thrace  to  Athens ;  secondly,  to  bring  the  Delphic  oracle 


CH.  II.  GENESIS  OF  EPIC  POETRY.  15 

Lycus  were  known  as  the  authors  of  antique  oracles,  all  of  them 
probably  spurious.  This  only  is  to  be  observed  about  the  old 
responses  of  the  Delphic  oracle,  that  while  the  extant  rhetra 
of  Lycurgus  seems  to  be  literally  an  oracular  response  in  the 
Delphic  dialect,  we  are  told  that  the  hexameter  verse  was  first 
invented  at  Delphi,  either  by  Phcmonoe,  the  first  priestess, 
or  by  Olen,  when  he  founded  the  prophetic  shrine. 

This  inquiry  into  the  poetry  of  the  Greeks  before 
Homer  leads  us  to  some  very  natural  and  some  very  strange 
results.  In  the  first  place,  no  educated  Greek,  except  perhaps 
Herodotus,  seems  to  have  denied  the  existence  of  poems,  far 
less  of  poets,  anterior  to  Homer.  The  tradition  about  these 
poets  is  all  the  more  trustworthy,  because  they  are  not 
represented  in  any  sense  as  forerunners  of  Homer.  For,  in 
the  second  place,  all  the  poems  attributed  to  these  men 
were  either  lyrical  or  oracular ;  they  were  all  short,  and  they 
were  all  strictly  religious.1  In  these  features  they  contrasted 
broadly  with  the  epic  school  of  Homer.  Even  the  hexame- 
ter metre  seems  not  to  have  been  used  in  these  old  hymns,  and 
was  called  a  new  invention  of  the  Delphic  priestess.  Still 
further,  the  majority  of  these  hymns  is  connected  with  mys- 
teries apparently  ignored  by  Homer,  or  with  the  worship  of 
Dionysus,  which  he  hardly  knew. 

§  13.  Indeed  the  Homeric  poems  seem  to  ignore  all  Pelas- 
gian  religion  (save  in  a  single  appeal  to  Zeus);  they  seem  to 
ignore  the  Thracian  bards  and  their  Muse-worship ;  they  speak 
of  the  rich  shrine  of  Delphi  without  even  naming  an  oracle.  It 
is  therefore  plain  that  if  these  early  bards  were  really  the 
forerunners  of  Homer  in  time,  they  can  in  nowise  be  called 
his  teachers  or  forerunners  in  poetry.  He  seems  to  start  from 
quite  a  fresh  commencement,  like  Archilochus,  like  ^Eschylus, 
•like  Theocritus,  and  to  start  up  among  a  people  who  knew 
poetry,  but  of  a  different  sort. 

What,  then,  were  the  real  beginnings  of  Epic  poetry,  and 
who  prepared  the  way  for  the  great  Iliad  as  we  have  it  ?  To 

— really  a  different  religion — into  relation  with  them  ;  and,  lastly,  to  satisfy 
the  universal  desire  of  bringing  great  men  of  old  into  near  relationship. 
'  Thus  of  Thamyris  Suidas  says  (sub  voc. )  :  typcvbe  ue'Aij  /cal  &fffj.ara. 


16  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  ifc 

this  question  we  can  only  answer  by  a  probable  theory,  which  now 
indeed  has  been  accepted  by  many  competent  critics,  which  is 
however  not  based  directly  on  positive  facts,  but  on  reasonable 
inferences.  The  hexameter  verse  was  consistently  attributed 
to  the  Delphic  priests,  who  were  said  to  have  invented  and 
used  it  in  oracles.  In  other  words,  it  was  first  used  in  religious 
poetry.  If  we  examine  its  structure,  as  opposed  to  the  shorter 
and  more  varied  lyric  measures-,  it  is  evidently  composed  and 
intended  for  sustained  narrative,  and  for  poems  of  consider- 
able length.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  priests  did  com- 
pose such  works  for  the  purpose  of  teaching  the  attributes 
and  adventures  of  the  gods,  and  bringing  into  harmony  the 
various  local  myths  concerning  them.  These  genealogies  of 
the  gods  were  called  T/ieogonies,  and  we  have  still  under  the 
name  of  Hesiod  a  poem  of  this  class,  which,  though  later 
than  Homer,  appears  to  have  been  composed  upon  a  far  earlier 
model,  and  affords  an  example  of  these  didactic  religious 
works.  It  may  be  that  the  earlier  lyric  hymns  contained  short 
descriptions,  such  as  we  find  them — an  epic  element — in  the 
remains  of  Pindar  and  Stesichorus ;  but  the  superior  evenness 
and  calm  of  the  hexameter  must  soon  have  made  this  species 
of  verse  generally  preferred  for  narrative  purposes. 

§  14.  With  the  gods  were  closely  connected  the  heroes, 
who  ruled  over  the  tribes  in  these  old  feudal  days,  and  it  was 
impossible  to  treat  of  the  descendants  of  the  gods  without  record- 
ing the  legends  of  older  days  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  So 
the  genealogies  and  acts  of  demigods  and  of  men  came  to  be 
treated  in  connection  with  the  Theogonies  of  the  priests. 
Such  old  genealogical  epics  were  said  to  have  survived  long 
among  the  Peloponnesians.  But  the  secular  element  gradually 
made  way,  especially  among  the  luxurious  and  worldly  lonians, 
and  a  class  of  bards  who  were  not  priests  began  to  treat  the 
histories  of  the  heroes  and  their  adventures,  in  fact,  the  icXla 
avlpuv  i  of  Homer,  which  delighted  the  Ionic  chiefs  and  their 


CH.  ii.  POETS  BEFORE  HOMER.  17 

courts.  Thus  epic  poetry,  from  having  been  purely  religious, 
became  purely  secular.  After  having  treated  men  and  heroes 
in  subordination  to  the  gods,  it  came  to  treat  the  gods  in  rela- 
tion to  men.  Indeed  it  may  be  said  of  Homer,  that  in  the  image 
of  man  created  he  God.1  The  statement  of  Herodotus,  that 
Homer  and  Hesiod  —  the  poet  of  adventure  and  the  genealogist 
—  made  the  religion  of  the  Greeks,  and  assigned  to  the  gods  their 
epithets  and  functions,  is  apparently  true,  and  full  of  import.2 

We  must  take  care  not  to  understand  him  as  if  these  poems 
had  created  or  even  commenced  this  transformation.  It  is 
plain  enough  that  Homer  and  Hesiod  represent,  both  theo- 
logically and  socially,  the  close  of  a  long  epoch,  and  not  the 
youth  of  the  Greek  world,  as  some  have  supposed.  The  real 
signification  of  many  myths  is  lost  to  them,  and  so  is  the  im- 
port of  most  of  the  names  and  titles  of  the  elder  gods,  which 
are  archaic  and  strange,  while  the  subordinate  personages  gene- 
rally have  purely  Greek  names.  Such  epithets  as  Argeiphontes, 
Tritogeneia,  and  Philommeides  (laughter-loving)  seem  purely  tra- 
ditional ;  indeed,  the  latter  is  wrongly  interpreted  by  Hesiod 
(Theog.  198)  from  jujycW.  Speculations  about  these  words  were 
common  in  the  Boeotian  school.  Some  picturesque  epithets, 
such  as  vv^  dot},  which  seem  to  indicate  the  first  surprise  of 
northern  tribes  at  the  rapid  sunsets  in  southern  Greece,  may  be 
also  traditional,  and  derived  from  old  hieratic  poetry. 

But    in   Homer's  time  the  whole    character  of   popular 

Theog.  99,  wljo  shows  the  combination  of  the  gods  and  heroes  in  this  sort 
of  poetry, 

avrap  aoiSbs 

Movffdwv  6epd.Trcav  K\tla  trportpcav  avdpcaircev 

\ifj.vi\(Tri  /MaKdpas  "re  Qeovs  01  "OAuyUTtw 


Cf.  also  the  Hymn  to  Del.  Apollo,  160.      These  passages  are  collected  by 
Bergk,  Literaturgeschichte,  i.  p.  347. 

1  Cf.  Aristotle,  Pol.  i.  I  (p.  1252  b)  for  this  oft-repeated  idea. 

2  Bernhardy  (Hist.  Lit.  ii.  I,  78)  cautions  us  against  exaggerating  the 
words  of  Herodotus  so  as  to  comprise  the  whole  religion  of  the  Greeks. 
He  believes  that  real  faith  and  religious  feeling  were  strong  in  the  race,  and 
kept  up  by  cults,  and  by  simple  prayer  and  devotion,   very  generally.     It 
was  the  combination  of  plastic  art  -with  epic  poetry  which  made  the  mytho- 
logical notions  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  so  prominent. 


1 8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  II. 

religion  had  become  altered  and  humanised ;  the  wars,  and  ad- 
ventures, and  passions  of  men  had  become  the  centre  of  interest 
among  the  poets.  We  must  not  imagine  that  the  older  and 
simpler  religion  wholly  disappeared.  As  the  common  people 
went  on  singing  their  Linus  and  lalemus,  and  jesting  at  their 
marriage  and  vintage  feasts,  so  schools  of  priests  and  didactic 
bards  kept  up  the  old  genealogical  epics  about  the  gods  and 
their  human  descendants,  especially  in  the  poorer  Pelopon- 
nesus, and  in  Bceotia,  while  the  rich  and  prosperous  lonians 
revelled  in  the  glories  of  Homer.  But  so  strongly  was  the 
predominance  of  the  Ionic  epos  felt,  that  the  Ionic  dialect 
was  universally  adopted  in  didactic  poems  ;  and  genealogical 
poems,  nay,  even  the  responses  of  the  Delphic  oracle,  were 
composed  in  this  dialect,  which  was  widely  different  from  most 
of  those  spoken  in  Greece  proper. 

The  great  brilliancy  of  Homer  has  completely  eclipsed  all 
the  earlier  stages  of  the  Epos.  He  alludes  to  many  stories 
which  appear  to  have  been  treated  before  him  in  shorter  lays  ; 
he  speaks  of  the  hunt  of  Calydon,  of  the  exploits  of  Nestor,  of 
the  labours  of  Heracles,  of  the  good  ship  Argo,  as  well  known  ; 
he  alludes  to  the  wars  of  the  gods,  and  cites  a  Catalogue  of 
famous  women.  It  may  be  well  not  to  conclude  this  preli- 
minary sketch  without  noting  these  epic  subjects  referred  to  in 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  as  well  as  the  chief  popular  songs 
which  Homer  mentions,  and  which  have  left  some  traces  even 
in  historical  times. 

§  15.  Taking  the  Iliad  separately,  as  the  older  6f  the  poems, 
and  therefore  furnishing  the  clearest  evidence  as  to  what  earlier 
epic  lays  must  have  existed,  we  find  a  considerable  body  of 
stories  mentioned  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  extremely  pro- 
bable that  they  were  no  mere  current  popular  tales,  but  had 
been  poetically  treated.  This  is  surely  the  case  with  the 
legends  of  the  wars  and  conflicts  among  the  gods  in  A  396  sq., 
E  380  sq.,  Z  130  sq.,  O  10  sq.  Some  of  these  are  conflicts  for 
supremacy  among  the  gods ;  others  are  quarrels  about  or  with 
men.  Both  are  quite  foreign  to  popular  poetry,  and  show  the 
influence  of  a  school  of  priests  or  theologians  who  were  rapidly 
becoming  secular.  The  actual  battle  of  the  gods  in  *  is  a  speci- 


CH.  II.  OLD  POPULAR  SONGS.  19 

men  of  this  sort  of  work.  There  is  less  obvious,  but  still  dis- 
tinct mention  of  genealogical  epics  in  S  38  sq.  and  3  201,  246. 
But  the  great  mass  of  legends  alluded  to  are  the  adventures  of 
earlier  heroes,  such  as  Tydeus,  Meleager,  Heracles,  and  Beller- 
ophon ;  as  well  as  of  celebrated  wars,  such  as  those  with  the 
Amazons  and  Centaurs.  There  are  even  earlier  legends  about 
heroes  at  the  Trojan  war  presupposed,  as  is  the  case  with 
Achilles  and  Hector  among  those  present,  and  Philoctetes  and 
Protesilaus,  among  those  absent  or  dead.  Even  should  it  be 
held  that  some  of  these  were  mere  current  talk,  preserved 
among  the  people  as  oft-told  tales,  yet  such  is  the  number  of 
them,  and  such  the  character  of  some  of  them,  that  no  fair 
critic  could  possibly  deny  the  existence  of  a  large  number  of 
shorter  lays  of  an  epic  character  earlier  than  the  Iliad,  and 
even  presupposed  by  it. 

§  16.  Let  us  pass  to  the  popular  poems  alluded  to  in  the 
same  way.  Euripides,  who  was  something  of  an  antiquary, 
draws  a  picture  of  women  at  the  loom,  like  Calypso  and  Circe 
in  the  Odyssey,  singing  epic  lays  to  the  sound  of  the  plying 
shuttle.1  In  his  day  no  such  custom  existed;  whether  he  is 
correct  in  drawing  this  picture,  we  cannot  now  tell ;  he  is 
certainly  the  best  authority  we  could  have  in  his  own  time. 

As  Linus  and  lalemus  were  afterwards  personified  as  sons 
of  the  Muses,  the  subjects  of  sad  ditties  sung  on  various  occa- 
sions among  the  people,  so  Hymenoeus  was  the  personified 
marrage  song,  of  which  we  find  distinct  mention  in  Homer.2 
All  these  were  evidently  choral  performances,  accompanied  by 
pipes  and  harps,  as  well  as  by  a  dancing  chorus  of  youths,  and 

OUT'  firl  KepKifftv, 

yiire  \6yois 

tf>d.Tii/  &iov  euTfX'tts  M£Te'x€'" 

6e66cv  TfKva  Ova/rots, 

says  his  chorus  (Ion,  v.  506).     And  again,  v.  196  of  the  same  play, 

&S  f/JLOlffl  JJ.V- 

BevfTai  irapa  irrjvats 
curiricnas  'l6\aos. 

2  The  scholiast  on  2  570  gives  the  following  specimen  of  the  Linus 


20  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  II. 

the  last  was  sung  during  the  procession  of  the  bride  to  her  new 
home.  So  the  Threnus  or  funeral  dirge  seems  a  choral  song, 
but  with  solos  interspersed,  as  may  be  inferred  from  the  de- 
scriptions in  the  last  books  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Hecuba, 
Helen,  and  Andromache  each  make  a  separate  lament  over  the 
body  of  Hector,  and  this  seems  an  expansion  of  the  simpler 
and  shorter  account.1  In  the  Odyssey  the  nine  Muses  lead 

song,  which  has  been  variously  emended  and  restored.  I  quote  it  accord- 
ing to  Bergk's  version  (Fragg.  Lyr.  p.  1297)  — 

S>  Aij/e  iraffi  Beoifftv 

rerifj-fve,  arol  ybp  eSuKav 

Trotercp  yu.eA.os  avBpanroiffiv 

<p<avats  \iyvpais  deltrar 

4>ol)3oj  8e  K6r<f  a*  avaipe't, 

MoCerai  8e  o*e  Oprjvfouffiv. 

Probably  the  dialect'  of  this  song  has  been  considerably  modernised,  but  the 
metre  seems  very  primitive,  and  is  probably  that  from  which  the  hexa- 
meter was  formed.  The  lines  vary  in  pairs,  and  may  be  called  parosmiacs, 
or,  better,  dactylic,  with  01  without  an  anacrusis,  thus  :  «j  |  _^w  j  _j^  |  _  «• 
Leaving  out  the  first  anacrusis,  we  find  that  each  pair  of  these  lines,  with 
at  times  the  slightest  alteration,  can  form  an  hexameter.  This  origin 
would  also  account  for  the  importance  of  the  strong  caesura  in  hexameters, 
which  was,  in  fact,  the  old  point  of  junction  of  separate  lines.  We  have 
fragments  of  Hymenceal  hymns  by  Sappho  (Fragg.  91  sq.,  Bergk),  of 
which  the  first  may  possibly  be  an  imitation  of  the  old  popular  form  :  — 

fyoj  $$1  TO  /j.e\a6po\< 

'T/jL-fivaov 
aeppere  re/CTOi/es  fivSpe., 

'f/j.-fivaov 

epxerai  fffos  "Apevi 


HvSpos  fj. 
tfffj.^vaov. 

Here  the  metre  is  apparently  the  same  as  in  the  Linus  song.  It  is  not 
probable  that  the  beautiful  chorus  of  Euripides'  Phaethon,  beginning  v^v, 
fytV,  is  meant  for  a  hymemeus,  it  seems  rather  an  ode  to  Aphrodite.  This 
would  most  appropriately  be  sung  by  the  chorus,  while  the  real  procession 
was  supposed  to  have  gone  to  the  bridegroom's  house. 
1  fi  72°  :  ""op^  5'  ffoctv  aoiSous, 


ol  /jiff  &P1  tOp-fiveov,  tirl  8e  ffrevdxovro  yvvcuKfs. 


CH.  II.  THE   THRENUS.  21 

the  Threnus,  supported  by  the  Nereids.  If  we  are  to  trust  the 
descriptions  of  the  Iliad,  the  Threnus  was  not  a  fixed  formula, 
but  a  rehearsal  of  the  virtues  of  the  dead — a  form  of  lament 
common  to  almost  all  ages  and  nations.  But  of  course  the 
epic  poet  must  have  modified  the  original  metre,  which  can 
hardly  have  been  hexameter. 

The  rest  of  the  fragments  of  that  Greek  popular  poetry 
which  may  have  been  in  vogue  before  Homer,  but  which  is  not 
actually  mentioned  in  the  poems,  will  be  better  discussed  in 
connection  with  the  origin  of  lyric  poetry.  The  comic  or 
lighter  poems  ascribed  to  Homer,  such  as  the  Margites  and 
Eircsione,  which  show  peculiarities  in  metre  and  style  of  great 
interest,  will  be  treated  after  the  Homeric  hymns.  Enough 
has  here  been  quoted  to  prove  the  widespread  practice  of  danc- 
ing and  playing  together  with  lyric  singing,  partly  religious, 
like  the  poean  of  supplication  or  of  victory,1  partly  secular,  such 
as  war-dances  and  dances  at  feasts.  We  have  also  shown  the 
almost  certain  existence  of  shorter  epics,  both  heroic  and 
genealogical.  Such  were  the  conditions  of  literature  from  which 
Homer  or  the  Homeric  poems  sprang. 

1  A  473,  x  391. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE     HOMERIC     POEMS. — HISTORY      OF    THEIR      TRANSMISSION 
FROM   THE   EARLIEST  DAYS.— EDITIONS,   SCHOLIA,    ETC. 

§  17.  THE  first  great  problem  which  meets  us  when  we  ap- 
proach this  subject  is  that  of  the  origin  and  composition  of  the 
Homeric  poems.  Was  this  wonderful  species  of  Greek  litera- 
ture created  by  the  transcendent  genius  of  a  single  man,  or 
was  it  the  outgrowth  of  a  series  of  lesser  men  and  lesser 
poems?  Is  Homer  a  real  and  historical  person,  or  is  he  only 
the  imaginary  author  to  whose  single  genius  was  ascribed  the 
combined  excellence  of  many  man,  together  with  the  organis- 
ing and  combining  talent  of  later  hands?  Were  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  handed  down  from  prehistoric  days  substantially 
in  the  form  which  they  now  present,  and  did  the  arrangers 
(hayntvaerrai)  of  Solon's  and  later  days  only  restore  the 
original  order,  or  were  the  elements  of  these  works  lying  in 
their  original  disorder  and  confusion  when  Onomacritus,  or 
Theagenes,  or  Antimachus  brought  them  into  unity,  thus 
creating  an  Iliad  and  an  Odyssey  which  had  never  before 
existed  ? 

This  is  the  first  great  problem  on  which  an  historian  of 
Greek  literature  must  make  up  his  mind.  It  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  he  will  now  be  able  to  discover  a  new  theory, 
seeing  that  all  possible  hypotheses  have  already  been  suggested. 
It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  he  will  reconcile  the  majority  of 
scholars,  who,  having  long  since  compromised  themselves  by 
declaring  for  various  solutions,  will  not  desire,  or  indeed  be 
able,  to  shake  off  their  long-adopted  and  cherished  convictions. 
But  what  is  fairly  to  be  demanded  from  him  is  a  critical  esti- 
mate of  the  controversy  up  to  its  latest  stage,  and  a  survey  of 


CH.  III.  LEGEND  ABOUT  HOMER.  23 

how  much  certainty  has  been  attained,  and  how  much  doubt 
still  remains,  in  the  present  state  of  Homeric  controversy. 
Nor  is  it  fair  to  the  student  that  this  survey  should  be  con- 
cluded without  the  critic's  venturing  to  express  his  own  convic- 
tions on  the  subject. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  of  approaching  these  complicated  and 
difficult  problems  is,  in  the  first  instance,  to  dispose  of  the 
external  history  of  the  poems. 

§  1 8.  We  need  but  cast  a  passing  glance  at  the  legends 
current  among  the  Greeks  about  Homer  as  a  person,  and  as 
the  author  of  the  great  epics.  It  is  quite  certain  that  the  ex- 
tant lives  of  Homer,  attributed  to  Herodotus  and  to  Plutarch, 
have  no  authority,  and  that  even  the  most  critical  inquirers 
of  an  earlier  age  could  find  out  nothing  trustworthy  about 
him.1  The  very  name  of  the  poet  has  been  variously  explained, 
and  has  given  rise  to  long  controversies.  The  older  mean- 
ings of  hostage,  companion,  or  blind  have  given  way  before  the 
theory  that  the  name  is  somehow  compounded  with  ipoir. 
Welcker  suggested  b/j.ov  and  apw,  in  the  sense  of  '  connector  of 
lays.'  Upon  this  G.  Curtius  observes  that  the  root  dp  had 
originally  an  intransitive  sense,  so  that  with  this  derivation  the 
word  would  mean  the  'bond  of  union,'  or  centre-point  of  the 
legends.2 

1  See  the  critical  discussion  of  these  lives,  eight  in  number,  in  Senge- 
busch's  Horn.  Diss.  prior,  pp.  i  sq.  Four  are  anonymous,  another  attri- 
buted to  Porphyry,  and  one  of  the  fullest  is  in  Suidas'  Lexicon.  None  of 
them  seems  to  be  older  than  the  age  of  Augustus,  and  some  of  them  are  cer- 
tainly as  late  as  the  2nd  century  A.D.  That  attributed  to  Plutarch  (who 
had  really  written  upon  Homer)  is  not  more  genuine  than  that  ascribed  to 
Herodotus.  The  extant  aywv,  or  contest  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  though  it 
may  preserve  old  legends,  mentions  Hadrian,  and  is  therefore  not  prior  to 
his  reign.  Modern  critics  refer  its  origin  to  Alcidamas. 

2  But,  as  Sengebusch  and  "others  observe,  this  derivation  would  imply 
among  yEolians  and  Dorians  a  form  "Opdpos,  which  never  occurs.*  All  the 
Doric  citations  agree  in  the  form  "Owpos.  This  seems  to  show  that  the  ori- 
ginal form  was  not  "0/j.apos,  but  "0/j.epos  or"O/j.apos,  and  this  not  formed  from 
<5/xoO  and  eJpco  (which  would  give  as  dialectical  forms  "Opipos  and  "O^tppos), 
but  from  6pov,  with  a  mere  suffix,  in  the  sense  of  'the  harmonious.'  This 
is  the  derivation  preferred  by  Ditntzer  and  Sengebusch.  Upon  this  theory 
it  may  be  identified  with  the  'OuvprjTos,  and  the  more  celebrated  ®d/j.vpis, 


24  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  III. 

§  19.  The  still  wider  controversies  as  to  the  age  and  the 
birthplace  of  the  poet  were  idle  and  resultless,  till  new  light 
came  to  be  thrown  upon  the  causes  of  the  variations  among 
the  ancients,  first  by  the  researches  of  Carl  Miiller,  and  more 
recently  by  Sengebusch.  We  will  consider  the  dates  first. 
These  may  be  fairly  divided  into  those  of  conjecture,  and 
those  of  tradition.  Thus,  among  the  former,  Crates  placed 
Homer  60  years  after  the  Trojan  war  ;  Philochorus  180  years  ; 
Eratosthenes  240  years  ;  others  in  Archilochus'  or  Lycurgus' 
times.  Miiller  was  the  first  to  show  that  in  these  chronological 
speculations  the  learned  Greeks  used  astronomical  cycles,  par- 
ticularly  that  of  sixty  solar  years,  which  corresponded  to  sixty- 
three  lunar.  Hence  the  apparently  precise  number  of  years  post 
Troica  merely  mean  the  number  of  cycles,  or  multiples  of  sixty, 
which  were  supposed  to  have  elapsed,  of  which  the  seventh  co- 
incided with  Lycurgus,  and  the  eighth  with  Archilochus. 

These  speculations  were,  however,  suggested  by  the  tra- 
ditional dates  asserted  in  sundry  towns,  which  laid  claim  to 
have  been  the  poet's  birthplace  or  residence,  and  the  dates  vary 
from  the  Athenian  tradition,  which  places  him  at  the  supposed 
time  of  the  Ionic  migration  (circ.  1043  B-C-)>  to  the  Cretan, 
which  places  him  in  the  days  of  Thaletas  (625  B.C.).  The  par- 
ticular dates  variously  assigned  during  this  period  by  the  cities 
are  shown  with  great  probability  to  be  determined  by  genealo- 
gical if  not  by  astronomical  reasons.  In  the  genealogies  pre- 
served by  the  Ionic  clans  or  gentes  in  the  Asiatic  towns,  the 
generation  was  specified  in  which  Homer  was  born.  Three 
generations  were  allowed  for  a  century.  Hence  the  Colopho- 
nians  placed  his  birth  at  Colophon,  132  years  before  the  first 
Olympiad  ;  the  first  year  of  which,  being  included,  makes  up 
four  generations.  The  400  years  which  Herodotus  (cf.  above, 
p.  9)  mentions  as  the  interval  between  himself  and  Homer 
means  •twelve  generations,  perhaps  in  the  genealogies  of  the 
Samians,  to  which  he  attached  great  importance.  We  thus 
obtain  a  logical  reason  for  the  apparent  precision  in  the  num- 
bers of  the  years  assigned  as  the  dates  of  Homer's  birth. 

who  are  mentioned  as  related  to  the  poet.     The  whole  matter  is  carefully 
argued  by  Sengebusch  (Diss.  Horn,  prior,  pp.  89-100). 


CH.  in.    CAUSE  OF  THE   VARIATION  IN  DATES.     25 

§  20.  How  shall  we  account  for  the  extraordinary  diverg- 
ence of  place  and  of  date?  From  a  careful  comparison  of 
these  legends  Sengebusch  was  led  to  the  important  result 
that  they  severally  note  the  establishing  of  a  Homeric  school 
of  rhapsodes  in  the  various  cities,  and  from  this  evidence 
he  endeavours  to  construct  a  history  of  the  spread  of  epic 
schools  of  poetry  through  Greece.  Thus,  starting  from 
the  tradition  of  the  Athenians,  which  Aristarchus  adopted 
(possibly  from  Theagenes),  that  Homer  was  an  Athenian,  he 
holds  him,  or  his  poetry,  to  have  migrated  with  the  Ionic 
settlers,  first  to  the  island  of  los  (according  to  the  tradition  of 
that  people),  then  to  Smyrna,  at  the  time  when  the  Kymseans 
sent  a  colony  there.  These  earliest  notices  may  possibly 
refer  to  a  personal  Homer.  The  traditions  of  the  Chians, 
Coiophonians,  Samians,  Milesians,  as  well  as  of  the  Cyprians, 
Cretans,  and  Lacedsemonians,  he  interprets  as  simply  the 
recollection  of  the  first  settlement  of  epic  schools — that  of 
Crete  by  Thaletas.  When  poems  with  local  allusions  (such  as 
the  Chian  Hymn  to  Apollo)  came  to  be  composed  by  suc- 
ceeding poets,  these  allusions  were  ascribed  to  the  original 
Homer,  and  his  birthplace  asserted  in  accordance  with  them. 
It  is  a  remarkable  corroboration  of  this  theory,  that  the  suc- 
cessive dates  assigned  by  the  various  towns  correspond  to 
the  natural  spread  of  the  Ionic  race  in  the  Eastern  Levant — 
Cyprus  and  Crete  being  the  latest  points  (with  the  latest 
traditional  dates) ;  los  and  Smyrna  the  earliest,  and  directly 
attached  to  the  Athenian  date,  which  asserts  Homer  to  have 
gone  out  with  the  Ionic  migration. 

§  21.  There  are  many  traces  that  the  poems  early  attained 
a  great  and  widespread  reputation.  Midas,  king  of  Phrygia,  and 
Gyges,  king  of  Lydia,  who  lived  shortly  after  the  year  700  B.C., 
are  said  to  have  patronised  Greek  rhapsodists  at  their  courts,  as 
we  hear  from  Nicolaus  of  Damascus.  But  whatever  doubts 
may  be  entertained  about  these  kings,  it  is  probable  that  the 
prominent  place  given  to  Lycian,  Rhodian,  and  Cretan  heroes 
points  to  recitation  in  these  countries,  a  long  way  from  the 
original  home  of  the  poems.  The  enumeration  in  the  Cata- 
logue of  Rhodes,  Cos,  and  other  adjoining  islands,  on  the 

VOL.  r. — 2 


26  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  III. 

Greek  side,  though  their  situation  would  naturally  place  them 
with  the  Mysian  cities,  among  the  allies  of  the  Trojans,  is  a 
clear  evidence  how  strong  an  interest  was  taken  in  the  poems 
by  the  chiefs  of  these  islands.  This  far-reaching  influence  is 
also  proved  by  the  adoption  of  both  metre  and  dialect  of  the 
Ionic  epos  by  the  Delphic  oracle,  and  by  the  Boeotian  school  of 
Hesiod.  It  is  further  proved  by  the  consistent  avoidance  of 
Homer's  subjects  in  the  cyclic  poems,  or  by  other  epic  composers, 
who  flourished  during  an  epoch  reaching  back  from  Solon's 
day  for  a  long  period.  Lastly,  the  legend  that  Lycurgus  brought 
the  poems  to  Sparta,  though  perhaps  a  mere  copy  of  the  more 
authentic  stories  of  Solon's  care  to  preserve  them,  points  to  the 
belief  that  they  were  early  known  and  prized  in  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus. This  is  corroborated  by  Herodotus'  story  (v.  67), 
that  Cleisthenes  forbad  poetic  contests  in  reciting  Homer  at 
Sicyon,  on  account  of  the  prominence  the  poet  had  given  to 
Argos.  The  chest  of  Cypselus,  an  old  work  of  art  described 
by  Pausanias,  had  among  its  pictures  scenes  from  both  Iliad 
and  Odyssey. 

§  22.  The  first  difficulty  which  arises,  if  we  admit  this 
early  date  for  the  composition  of  the  Iliad,  is  to  account  for  its 
preservation  and  transmission  up  to  the  time  of  Solon,  who 
began  that  careful  study  of  the  old  epics  which  was  con- 
tinued by  Peisistratus  and  Hipparchus,  and  to  which  we 
doubtless  owe  the  present  form  and  completeness  of  both 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  It  was  believed  in  old  times  that  both 
poems  were  written  down  by  Homer,  and  then  transcribed  and 
preserved  by  schools  of  rhapsodists.  This  opinion  was  ex- 
ploded as  soon  as  any  close  criticism  was  brought  to  bear  upon 
them,  and  has  never  been  maintained  since  Wolfs  refutation,  till 
resuscitated  by  Bergk,  who  endeavours  to  prove  that  writing, 
even  general  writing,  was  much  older  in  Greece  than  has  been 
supposed,  and,  though  he  still  maintains  that  the  composition  » 
of  a  great  epic  such  as  the  Iliad  is  impossible  without  writing, 

1  I  am  convinced  that  it  is  rather  the  composition  than  the  transmission 
the  great  epics  which  postulates  the  use  of  letters.     It  is  the  plann'ne 

and  executing  the  structure,  not  the  remembering  of  it,  which  seems  almost 

unattainable  without  writing. 


CH.  III.  EARLY  SPECIMENS  OF  GREEK   WRITING.  27 

holds  that  it  probably  marks  the  very  time  when  this  instrument 
of  literature  first  came  into  use,  and  was  applied  to  perpetuate 
the  passing  thoughts  of  men.  But  when  he  fixes  this  epoch  as 
the  tenth  century  B.C.,  we  may  well  hesitate  and  wonder,  in  spite 
of  the  ingenuity  of  his  arguments.  He  has  indeed  established 
one  thing,  or  rather  recent  discoveries  have  established  one 
thing,  that  the  first  common  use  of  writing  was  generally  fixed  at 
too  late  a  date.  An  inscription  scrawled  by  Greek  mer- 
cenaries under  Psamatichus,  in  Upper  Egypt,  has  proved  that 
some  of  this  class  l  could  write  easily  about  the  year  600  B.C. 
— probably  fifty  years  sooner.2 

This  discovery  makes  it  almost  certain  that  the  Homeric 
poems  were,  or  could  have  been,  written  down3  about  700  B.C., 
and  thus  they  may  have  been  preserved  orally  only  for  a  very 
short  time.  The  analogy  of  early  French  and  German  epics  is 
quoted  to  prove  that  even  when  writing  exists  and  is  known, 
very  long  poems  are  preserved  and  recited  orally  without  seek- 
ing aid  from  this  invention.  But  there  existed  in  the  early 
Middle  Ages  a  severance  between  the  bard  and  the  literary 
classes  quite  foreign  to  Greek  life,  and  I  am  convinced  that  the 
rhapsodists 'did  not  delay  to  seize  the  advantage  offered  to 
them. 

§  23.  As  to  the  oral  preservation  and  transmission  before 
the  art  of  writing,  many  scholars  have  cited  cases  of  extraor- 
dinary memory  in  bards  and  strolling  minstrels,  and  there 

1  It  is  usual  to  say  'even  such  hirelings'  could  then  write  ;  and  this 
argument  is  employed  both  by  Bergk  and  Professor  Geddes  to  argue  a  wide 
and  therefore  not  recent  diffusion  of  writing.     Both  of  them  forget  that  it 
was  often  the  highest  classes — exiled  nobles  like  Alcoeus  and  Antimenidas 
— who  served  as  mercenaries,  and  on  account  of  their  literary  talents,  which 
raised  up  enemies  against  them  at  home.     Indeed,  at  no  epoch  of  Greek 
history  did  the  higher  classes  despise  mercenary  service. 

2  This  depends  upon  whether  we  take  the  Psammetichus  then  reigning 
to  be  the  first  or  the  second  of  the  name.    Cf.  Kirchhoff,  Studien  zur  Cesch. 
des  griech.  Alphabets. 

3  The  reader  who  desires  to  see  this  question  more  fully  discussed  may 
consult   my  articles   in  Macmittaii's   Magazine  for  October    1878,    and 
February  1879,  with  Mr.  Paley's  reply  and  my  rejoinder  in  the  succeeding 
numbers. 


28  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  in. 

is  no  impossibility  in  the  Iliad  or  Odyssey  having  been  so 
preserved,  especially  by  such  schools  or  guilds  of  rhapsodists  as 
certainly  existed  in  Greece.  In  fact,  in  addition  to  Creophylus 
of  Samos  and  Cynsethus  of  Chios,  both  of  whom  are  men- 
tioned as  friends  of  Homer,  or  early  preservers  of  his  poetry, 
the  main  source  of  early  traditions  about  Homer  seems  to  be 
among  the  clan  of  Homerida?,  at  Chios,  who  claimed  him  as 
their  founder,  and  who  recited  his  epics  through  Greece.  In 
the  Hymn  to  the  Delian  Apollo  one  of  these  bards  speaks  of 
himself,  and  we  know  of  contests  being  held  among  them, 
such  as  are  described  in  the  alleged  contest  between  Homer 
and  Hesiod.  So  little  difficulty,  indeed,  does  there  appear  to 
have  been  in  preserving  the  poems,  that  a  quantity  of  epic 
songs  came  down  to  historical  times  along  with  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey,  and  was  even  generally  referred  to  Homer,  until  a 
more  critical  taste  separated  the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  and 
acknowledged  the  two  great  poems  only.  And  not  only  were 
there  many  additional  poems,  and  many  additions  made  within 
the  poems  by  the  rhapsodists,  but  owing  to  the  fact  that  they 
were  usually  recited  in  cantos  or  separate  unities,  they  were 
remembered  in  fragments,  and  these  fragments  handed  down 
in  loose  and  uncertain  order. 

§  24.  Thus  we  must  conceive  Homer  as  reaching  the  first 
literary  epoch  in  Greece  in  some  such  condition.  With  the 
studies  of  Solon,  and  the  foundation  of  the  greatness  of  Athens, 
a  new  stage  begins  in  the  history  of  the  poems.  There  seems 
little  doubt  of  the  fact,  hinted  at  by  Pausanias  and  Plutarch,  but 
explicitly  stated  only  in  late  scholia — that  not  only  did  Peisis- 
tratus  and  his  son  Hipparchus  take  every  pains  to  circukte  the 
old  epics,  by  establishing  or  encouraging  musical  and  poetical 
contests,  at  which  recitations  took  place,  but  that  there  was 
even  a  sort  of  literary  commission  appointed  to  re-arrange  and 
edit  the  poems.1  This  commission  consisted  of  Orpheus  of 

1  Mr.  D.  B.  Monro  has  communicated  to  me  privately  his  doubts  about 
.he  whole  story,  which  he  regards  as  a  late  fabrication.  I  acknowledge  the 
frequent  absurdities  of  our  accounts,  which  mix  up  Zenodotus  and  Aristar- 
chus  with  Peisistratus,  but  still  I  shall  believe  in  there  being  an  authentic 
tradition,  until  he  gives  us  his  disproof  in  a  more  explicit  form. 


CH.  in.  THE  COMMISSION  OF  PEISISTRATUS.         29 

Croton,  Zopyrusof  Heraclea,  Onomacritus  of  Athens,  and  of  a 
fourth,  whose  name  is  not  to  be  made  out,  owing  to  a  corrup- 
tion of  the  text  of  the  scholion.  No  doubt  these  men  did  very 
important  work,  but  what  work  they  did  is  not  easy  to 
discover.  It  is  asserted  that  the  version  or  edition  of  the 
poems  which  they  sanctioned  rapidly  superseded  all  others ; 
that  it  was  the  archetype  from  which  the  well-known  city 
editions  were  long  afterwards  copied,  and  we  know  that  these 
were  the  oldest  and  most  trustworthy  materials  which  the 
Alexandrine  critics  used.  At  the  same  time,  we  have  distinct 
tradition  that  Onomacritus,  apparently  for  political  purposes, 
interpolated  lines  of  his  own,  and  this  raises  a  suspicion  that 
the  commission  may  have  handled  the  great  epics  with  some- 
what reckless  hands. 

§  25.  There  are  modern  critics  who  think  that  to  Onoma- 
critus we  owe  the  whole  unity  and  structure  of  the  great  epics, 
which  had  never  been  before  united,  and  that  ne  not  only 
brought  together  the  separate  lays,  but  welded  them  together 
artistically,  so  as  to  produce  the  poems  as  we  now  have  them. 
This  opinion,  which  must  be  discussed  at  greater  length  here- 
after, is,  in  the  first  place,  in  distinct  conflict  with  our  tradition, 
which  states  that  he  restored  unity  to  the  poems  which  had 
been  so  composed,  but  separated  and  corrupted  by  recitation. l 
There  are  also  clear  evidences  of  a  conservative  spirit  in  the 
old  arrangers  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  ;  for  they  left  in  the 
poems  a  number  of  repetitions  and  inconsistencies,  which 

1  It  is  reported  (Diog.  Laert.  i.  57,  and  Plato's  Hipparch.  228  B)  that 
Solon  ordered  the  poems  to  be  recited  by  the  rhapsodes  €|  foro/SoA.}}*  and 
e'|  viro\T)-fyea)s.  These  expressions  are  anything  but  clear  to  us,  and  have 
afforded  the  Germans  scope  for  endless  discussions.  It  results,  I  think, 
from  the  researches  of  Nitzsch  that  uiro/5oX^  means  probably  a  text,  01 
authoritative  list  of  lays,  to  which  the  rhapsodists  were  ordered  to  adhere. 
'E£  viro\r)tyfcas  is  by  no  means  so  clear,  but  is  fairly  explained  by  Bernhardy 
as  implying  fixed  divisions  or  lays  in  the  poems,  which  were  to  be  sung 
entire,  and  each  of  which  was  matched  against  other  similar  divisions  in 
the  contests.  Perhaps  it  does  not  differ  materially  from  the  other  phrase, 
with  which  it  is  not,  I  think,  used  in  common  (cf.  Sengebusch,  ii.  p.  in). 
Of  the  older  divisions  traceable  in  the  poems  I  will  speak  by  and  by  (cf. 
Bergk,  p.  496). 


30  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  in. 

they  could  have  easily  removed,  had  they  intended  to  produce 
a  new  and  harmonious  whole.  What  is  more  important,  there 
is  no  attempt  traceable  to  interfere  with  the  Homeric  gods,  and 
to  substitute  for  them  a  more  moral  and  philosophic  religion  ; 
still  less  any  allusion  to  the  Orphic  ideas  and  mysteries,  which 
had  in  Onomacritus'  day  become  very  prevalent  in  Greece. 
There  is  also  no  attempt  to  magnify  the  glories  of  Athens.  It 
may  be  held  certain  that  changes  in  this  direction  could  not 
but  have  been  attempted,  had  the  commission  of  Peisistratus 
not  confined  themselves  to  arranging  and  sifting  extant 
materials.  This,  then,  was  the  earliest  literary  criticism  on 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  all  the  rhapsodising  of  the  poems 
of  which  we  are  told  was  at  Athens,  and  in  connection  with 
this  edition,  though  it  was  merely  the  continuance  of  an  old 
and  widespread  fashion. 

There  seems  little  doubt  that  the  early  critics  did  not 
confine  themselves  to  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  but  embraced 
all  the  cyclic  epics  which  were  at  that  time,  or  perhaps  after 
that  time,  indiscriminately  ascribed  to  Homer.1  It  is  pro- 
bable that  the  commission  did  not  attempt  any  critical  sever- 
ance of  the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  and  that  in  the  course 
of  succeeding  studies  these  inferior  poems  were  condemned 
one  after  another  to  lose  their  high  claims  to  the  name  of 
Homer. 

§  26.  Thus  the  gradual  sifting  of  the  large  body  of  old  epic 
poetry  appears  to  have  begun  by  the  gathering  and  ordering 
of  all  the  materials  by  Onomacritus.  In  the  next  genera- 
tion Theagenes  of  Rhegium  was  the  first  professedly  critical 
writer  about  the  Iliad  whom  the  Greeks  knew.  Then 
comes  Stesimbrotus  of  Thasos,  towards  the  latter  half  of  the 

1  The  list  given  by  Suidas  shows  to  what   extent  this  was   done  • 
ra,  te  «>,  air*,   Kal 


M«oj3aTpaXo/iaXfa,  'Apax- 
™MaX<a,    Ttpavoftaxia,     Repays,    'A^apdou    ^Xwrw,    Hatyvn,    SiiccA/ai 
OAWW,  E«0a\4ua,  KrfieXoj,  "T^o,,  K^p,«.     Of  these  some  are  completely 
unknown,  and  none  have  maintained  their  claim  even  in  old  Greek  days 
It  does  not  include  the  Margitu,  which  was  acknowledged  genuine  by 


CH.  in.       HOMER  IN  GREEK  LITERATURE.  31 

fifth  century  B.C.  ;  and  he  again  is  followed  by  his  pupil 
Antimachus  of  Colophon,  during  the  Peloponnesian  war — him- 
self an  unsuccessful  epic  poet,  but  the  critical  editor  of  a 
text  of  Homer.  Thus  every  generation  since  Solon  had  its 
Homeric  studies.  Indeed,  at  the  time  of  the  middle  comedy 
these  critics  were  so  prominent  as  to  be  ridiculed  upon  the 
stage.  We  know  that  Aristotle  discussed  the  poems,  and 
is  even  said  to  have  prepared  a  special  edition  for  Alexander. 
The  copy  thus  prepared  was  carried  in  a  precious  Persian 
casket,  and  hence  known  as  >/  IK  vapQriKog.  The  quotations 
from  Homer  to  be  found  through  Aristotle  are  numerous,  and 
differ  remarkably  from  our  texts,  while  those  made  by  Plato 
are  according  to  our  texts.  Ammonius  wrote  a  book  about 
Plato's  citations,  and  yet  all  the  critics  are  silent  about  Aris- 
totle's text,  which  had  been  lost  when  the  school  of  Alexandria 
began  its  labours.  But  there  remain  fragments  of  his  six 
books  of  problems  about  Homer,  and  his  school  busied  them- 
selves with  these  questions  also.  We  find  that  Aristotle  used 
a  worse  text,  and  was  a  worse  Homeric  critic,  than  Plato. 

The  series  of  Attic  editors  and  critics  concludes  with 
Demetrius  Phalereus,  who  wrote  on  both  the  epics. 

§  27.  In  addition  to  the  professed  criticisms  on  the  text, 
which  were  not  many,  there  were  endless  allusions  to,  and 
discussions  about,  Homer  all  through  the  course  of  Greek 
history,  i.  (a)  Among  the  early  poets  Hesiod,  though  in- 
tentionally silent  about  the  Ionic  epic,1  was  noted  in  the  scholia 
as  implying  in  many  places  a  knowledge  of  the  Iliad.2  Similar 
allusions  are  found  to  Archilochus,  Alcman,  Stesichorus,  in  fact, 
in  all  the  older  poets.  Simonides  of  Ceos  seems  the  earliest  who 
mentioned  Homer  himself  as  distinguished  from  his  poems.3 
He  also  seems  to  refer  the  Theban  cycle  of  poems  to  Homer. 
Bacchylides  is  quoted  as  referring  Homer's  birthplace  to  los. 
Pindar  calls  him  both  a  Chian  and  a  Smyrnsean,  and  comments 
on  the  morality  of  his  praise  of 'Odysseus.  He  furthermore 

1  I  agree  with  Sengebusch  (ii.  n)  that  the  three  passages  in  which  he 
is  sunposed  to  mention  Homer  are  spurious. 

*  Twenty  places  are  cited  by  Sengebusch,  D.  IL  ii.  8. 
8  He  calls  him  a  Chian  poet,  quoting  Z  146. 


32  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  in. 

seems  to  have  referred  the  Cypria  to  Homer.  (/3)  As  regards 
the  tragic  poets,  not  only  did  ./Eschylus  profess  his  tragedies 
to  be  morsels  (r£juax>/)  from  the  mighty  banquets  of  Homer, 
but  Sophocles  'copied  the  Odyssey  in  many  dramas,'  and 
his  vulgar  admirers  were  wont  to  call  him  the  tragic  Homer. 
(y)  Passing  on  to  satyric  and  comic  poetry,  we  still  have  the 
Cyclops  of  Euripides,  many  Homeric  titles  of  other  satyric 
dramas  from  ^Eschylus,  and  the  rest,  and  indeed  the  Margites 
is  named  in  the  Poetics  as  the  direct  forerunner  of  comedy. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  middle  comedy,  in  which  types  of 
character  were  ridiculed.  The  learned  epics  of  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  will  be  considered  hereafter. 

2.  (a)  The  early  logographers,  who  wrote  much  on  genea- 
logies, were  often  cited  by  after  critics  both  for  differing  on  such 
points  from  Homer,  and  also  for  their  pedigrees  of  Homer  and 
the  other  ancient  poets.     (/3)  The  allusions  to  Homer  in  Hero- 
dotus and  Thucydides  are  frequent  and  highly  interesting.     On 
the  whole,  Herodotus  seems  the  more  critical,  as  he  rejects  the 
Cypria,   while  Thucydides  accepts  the  Hymn  to  the  Delian 
Apollo,    though  well  disposed  to  reject  the  legends  of  'the 
old  poets.'     It  is  also  to  be  remarked  that  their  references  show 
considerable  variations  from  the  present  text.     It  is  discussed 
by  Greek  grammarians  and  by  Germans  whether  Herodotus  or 
Thucydides  resembled  Homer  more  closely  in  style  and  tone 
of  thought — a  ridiculous  debate,  seeing  that  Herodotus  was 
both  by  temper  and  by  education  steeped  in  epic  poetry  and 
ways  of  thinking,  to  which  Thucydides  was  in  most  respects 
antagonistic.     Both  these  authors,  however,  as  they  treated 
a  definite  portion  of  later  history,  only  mention  Homer  inci- 
dentally,    (y)  Later  historians,  such  as  Ephorus,  who  gave  a 
general  history  of  Greece  from  the  earliest  times,  naturally  paid 
him  more  attention. 

3.  All   the  philosophers  were  obliged  to  consider  Homer 
as   the   source  of  the  popular  notions,  not  only  in  theology 
and  in  morals,  but  also  in  physics.     They  may  be   divided 
either  into  opponents  of  Homer,  as  an  immoral  and  false  teacher, 
which  was  the  opinion  of  Heracleitus,  Xenophanes,  Pythagoras 
and  Plato;  or  allegorising  interpreters,  such  as   Anaxagoras, 


CH.  in.     GENERAL  POPULARITY  OF  HOMER.  33 

Metrodorus  of  Lampsacus,  and  Democritus,  the  last  being 
the  author  of  the  earliest  Homeric  glossary.  The  Homeric  style 
and  language  of  Plato,  and  his  constant  citation  of  the  author 
whom  he  banishes  from  his  Republic,  has  excited  much  attention 
from  critics.  It  would  almost  seem  that  Aristarchus  had  Plato's 
very  copy  of  Homeric  before  him,  so  accurately  do  Plato's 
citations  agree  with  the  final  Alexandrian  text.  Antisthenes  the 
Cynic,  whose  style  and  tastes  were  by  no  means  so  poetical, 
wrote  a  number  of  tracts  on  special  Homeric  points,  and  indeed 
Plato's  attack  on  Homer  gave  rise  to  a  controversial  literature.1 
The  special  studies  of  the  Stoics,  Cleanthes  and  Chrysippus, 
were  developed  by  the  school  of  Pergamus,  which  adopted  their 
views.  Aristotle's  studies  on  Homer,  which  were  various,  led 
the  way  for  a  whole  series  of  Peripatetic  commentators. 

4.  I  will  but  add  a  word  on  the  Sophists,  who  constantly 
used  Homeric  subjects  for  declamation,  and  from  whom  we  still 
possess  Encomia  of  Helen  ;  there  are  also  allusions  to  Apolo- 
gies for  Paris,  Encomia  on  Polyphemus,  and  other  paradoxes. 

5.  Among  the  orators,  Demosthenes,  like  every  great  Greek 
writer,  is  said  to  have  imitated  Homer,  but  we  see  less  Homeric 
influence  in   his   than  in  Lycurgus'  and  ^Eschines'  speeches, 
both  of  whom  cite  passages,  though  with  considerable  variants 
from  our  texts. 

This  mere  skeleton  of  the  facts  shows  how  constant  and 
familiar  was  the  reading  of  Homer  in  classical  days.  We 
might  as  well  attempt  to  enumerate  the  biblical  phrases  and 
influences  in  our  own  standard  English  authors. 

§  28.  Such  were  the  preliminary  studies  on  Homer  when  he 
passed  into  the  hands  of  Zenodotus  at  Alexandria.  While 
he  found  many  city  editions,  and  private  texts  representing 
recensions  like  that  of  Rhianus,2  as  well  as  many  additional 
essays  or  problems,  such  as  those  of  Antimachus  or  Aristotle, 

1  Cf.  the  titles  cited  by  Sengebusch,  Diss.  Horn,  prior,  p.  119. 

2  It  may  be  inferred  that  critics  of  this  period,   and  even  Apollonius 
Rhodius  and  Aratus,  of  Alexandrian  days,  were  very  reckless  in  correct- 
ing the  text.     Timon  the  Sillograph  is  said  to  have  told  Aratus,  when  the 
latter  asked  his  advice  to  procure  a  good  text,  that  he  would  do  so,  ««  rots 
a.p'Xaiois  avriyp<i<pois  fi/rvy^dvoi,  Kai  /j.%]  TO?S  ijSt]  8ia>pt)(i)fj.fvois  (Diog.  Laert. 
be.  6). 

2* 


34  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE      CH.  nr. 

\ve  can  hardly  say  that  much  thorough  criticism  had  been 
done  before  his  day.  The  grammatical  or  philological  side 
was  probably  quite  obscured  by  the  philosophical  and  moral, 
and  lines  or  books  were  rejected  rather  as  being  unworthy 
of  the  great  poet  than  as  violating  epic  usage  or  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  old  epic  dialect.  For  we  must  remember 
that  Homer,  especially  after  the  rejection  of  the  inferior  works 
once  attributed  to  him,  became  literally  the  Bible  of  the  Greeks. 
All  religion  and  philosophy  were  supposed  to  be  contained  in  his 
poems,  and  of  course,  when  men  were  determined  to  find  these 
things,  they  easily  found  them.  As  Seneca  tells  us,  some  made 
him  a  Stoic,  some  a  Peripatetic,  some  an  Epicurean,  some 
even  discovered  him l  to  be  the  father  of  the  Sceptics.  Never- 
theless the  good  homely  orthodox  Greeks  of  earlier  days  had 
attached  all  their  moral  teaching  of  youth  to  the  examples  and 
advices  given  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 

A  good  deal  of  adverse  criticism  had  been  expended  upon 
this  way  of  looking  at  Homer  by  Plato,  in  the  wake  of  Hera- 
cleitus,  Xenophanes,  and  others;  but  of  these  Zoilus,  a  rhetorician 
of  the  fourth  century  B.C.,  the  pupil  of  Socrates  and  said  to  be 
a  teacher  of  Demosthenes,  has  gained  the  chief  notoriety. 
This  was  because  he  did  not  recognise,  like  Plato,  the  poetic 
excellence  of  the  poems,  but  attacked  them  aesthetically  and 
even  grammatically,  as  well  as  morally.  He  wrote  nine  books 
against  Homer.  His  name  might  probably  have  been  forgot- 
ten, but  for  the  fancy  of  some  Roman  emperors,  such  as 
Caligula  and  afterwards  Hadrian,  for  depreciating  Homer. 
Of  course  they  revived  and  favoured  whatever  adverse  criticism 
could  be  discovered.  But  it  may  fairly  be  said  that,  except 
the  work  of  Zoilus,  which  was  probably  more  a  rhetorical 
exercise  than  a  serious  attempt  to  destroy  Homer's  influence,2 
all  the  criticism  which  was  handed  down  to  the  school  of 
Alexandria  was  rather  troublesome  from  its  consistent  pane- 
gyric, and  even  superstitious  reverence  for  Homer,  than  in- 
structive from  its  severity  or  justice. 

1  Diog.  Laert.  ix.  71. 

2  yvfivaffias  eVe/ca,  tlwQfawi,  Kal  T£>V  f>T)r6puv  iv  TOIS  TfoirjTats 
(Schol.  K.  274), 


CH.  III.  THE  ALEXANDRIAN  SCHOOL.  35 

§  29.  It  seems  that  the  Alexandrian  critics,  when  they  came 
to  sift  all  these  materials,  and  were  unable  to  reach  back  even 
so  far  as  Peisistratus,  laid  most  stress  on  the  old  editions,  of 
which  seven  city  editions  were  then  extant,1  and  seven  KO-' 
iivcpa,  or  recensions  by  individual  scholars,  which  had  been 
prepared  from  the  recension  of  Onomacritus.  It  would  be 
most  interesting  to  know  at  what  exact  time  during  the  present 
period  these  copies  were  taken.  Seeing  that  epical  recitation 
went  out  of  fashion  when  lyric  and  dramatic  poetry  was  de- 
veloped, and  seeing  that  these  copies  were  thought  older  and 
better  than  those  of  the  earliest  critics,  they  cannot  have  been 
later  than  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  and  possibly 
somewhat  earlier. 

§  30.  When  we  speak  of  the  Alexandrian  critics  we  almost 
exclude  the  poets,  such  as  Philetas,  Aratus,  Apollonius  Rhodius, 
&c.,  and  confine  ourselves  strictly  to  the  grammarians,  who 
brought  the  accumulated  treasures  of  the  great  library  to  bear 
upon  the  study  of  the  text  of  Homer.  It  may  indeed  be  said 
that  all  philology  among  the  Greeks,  all  textual  and  grammatical 
criticism,  arose  from  the  desire  to  purify  and  to  understand  the 
text  of  Homer,  and  then  of  other  old  poets. 

The  glories  of  the  great  school  of  Alexandria  cluster  about 
three  names — the  successive  leaders  of  the  school,  the  two  latter 
each  rivalling  and  opposing  his  master.  Zenodotus 2  was  the  first 
who  rejected  as  spurious  all  but  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and 

An  edition  in  those  days  meant  a  single  official  copy,  preserved  by 
authority,  from  which  private  copies  were  made.  The  civic  editions  were 
the  Massaliotic,  Sinopic,  Chian,  Cyprian,  Argive,  Cretan,  and  ^Eolic 
(Lesbian).  The  four  first  were  Ionic,  the  rest  JEolic.  The  Massaliotic  is 
far  most  frequently  quoted  (twenty-nine  times),  the  Chian  next  (fifteen 
times).  The  ^Eolic  editions  seem  to  have  been  specially  intended  to  pre- 
serve the  Ionic  dialect  of  the  poems  among  an  JEo\ic  population.  The 
quotations  from  these  do  not  give  us  a  very  high  idea  of  them,  nor,  indeed, 
were  the  private  editions  much  better,  that  of  Antimachus  being  noted  for 
wild  conjectures.  Nevertheless,  Aristarchus  seems  never  to  have  opposed 
them,  when  they  all  agreed  (cf.  Sengebusch,  Diss.  Horn,  prior,  185-200). 
2  lie  was  an  Ephesian,  and  flourished  300-250  B.C.  The  second 
Ptolemy  made  him  librarian  at  Alexandria,  and  he  undertook  the  task  of 
critically  revising  the  epic  and  lyric  poets. 


36  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  ill. 

undertook  a  thorough  revision  of  the  text,  which  attained  such  a 
reputation  that  it  soon  obscured  all  others.  We  unfortunately 
know  hardly  anything  of  his  work,  and  what  we  know  is  from  the 
criticisms  of  his  successors.1  It  seems  probable  that  he  had 
before  him  no  sufficient  materials,  or  sufficient  preliminary  dis- 
cussion, to  afford  a  really  clear  and  scientific  method  of  esta- 
blishing the  text.  He  therefore  was  guided  partly  by  sesthetical 
and  moral  considerations,  partly  by  a  love  of  archaisms  and  rare 
forms.  He  seems  to  have  laid  special  stress  on  Ionic  forms,  if 
we  may  judge  from  the  occasional  references  to  him  in  the 
scholia.  But  he  rejected  and  altered  with  great  boldness,  and 
so  incurred  the  grave  censure  of  his  successors. 

Before  proceeding  further  we  may  notice  that  one  of  his 
pupils,  Hellanicus,  revived  the  doctrine  of  an  unknown  Xenon, 
and  asserted  the  separate  authorship  of  the  Odyssey.  This 
was  the  natural  and  logical  outcome  of  the  criticism  which  had 
abjudicated  the  Cyclic  poems  successively,  and  we  may  well 
wonder  that  this  final  step  had  not  been  taken  long  before. 
Hellanicus  appears  to  have  had  a  following — the  xwpi£°J'rfc 
(Separatists),  and  their  view  might  have  prevailed  but  for  the 
determined  hostility  of  Aristarchus,  who  crushed  it  completely 
till  the  present  century.  It  is  now  accepted  by  the  majority  of 
critics. 

§  31.  The  famous  successor  and  pupil  of  Zenodotus,  Aris- 
tophanes (of  Byzantium),  re-edited  Homer  from  a  more  con- 
servative as  well  as  critical  point  of  view.  Here  again  we  can 
only  speak  from  the  hints  left  us  by  the  criticisms  of  Aristarchus. 
He  checked  the  boldness  of  Zenodotus  in  rejections  and 
alterations,  and  based  his  labours  on  a  careful  comparative 
study  of  all  the  best  texts,  especially  the  city  texts,  which  were 
then  being  acquired  for  the  Alexandrian  library.  Though 

1  His  critical  edition  first  separated  the  poems  into  books,  noted  by  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet.  He  first  used  the  obelus,  to  distinguish  sus- 
picious lines,  whereas  the  manifestly  spurious  were  ejected.  These  pro- 
ceedings are  respectively  called  aflerTjo-Js  and  rb  ovSe  ypd<jxw.  He  also 
published  a  glossary  of  obscure  Homeric  words,  and  a  computation  of  the 
days  of  the  action  of  the  poems,  of  which  a  fragment  is  published  by 
Lachmann  (Betrachtungm,  p.  90). 


CH.  ill.  ARISTARCHUS.  37 

defended  by  his  pupil  Callistratus  against  the  attacks  of  Arist- 
archus,  he  did  not  maintain  his  ground,  and  we  must  deeply 
regret  that  the  labours  of  so  careful  and  candid  a  writer  have 
been  almost  totally  lost  to  us.1  Thirdly  comes  Aristarchus, 
a  sort  of  king  or  infallible  guide  to  later  grammarians,  whose 
opinions  were  adopted  by  the  scholiasts  even  when  they  were 
aware,  as  they  tell  us,  that  Zenodotus  or  Aristophanes  appeared 
more  reasonable. 

§  32.  Aristarchus  was  not  only  a  remarkable  critical  scholar, 
but  must  have  been  a  man  of  strong  and  commanding  person- 
ality, that  swayed  all  those  who  came  in  contact  with  him.  He 
again  edited  the  Homeric  poems  as  well  as  the  principal  lyric 
and  dramatic  authors,  and  besides  these  editions  published 
commentaries  (vrropt'ii/jara)  and  dissertations  (avyypap^a-a). 
Moreover,  his  oral  lectures  were  attended  by  a  crowd  of  eager 
hearers.  Thus  even  the  unwritten  opinions  of  Aristarchus, 
taken  down  by  his  numerous  pupils,  became  widely  known. 
He  analysed  carefully  the  epic  use  of  words  and  phrases  as 
well  as  the  epic  forms  of  the  myths,  and  based  most  of  his 
rejections  from  the  text  on  the  violation  of  these  criteria.  He 
indicated  his  opinions  by  a  famous  series  of  critical  marks, 
which  are  preserved  to  us  in  the  old  Marcian  MS.  at  Venice.2 

1  He  rejected  the  end  of  the  Odyssey  from  i|/  297,  and  used  the  stigme 
and  antisigma,  as  well  as  the  Kepavviov,  "]"•  to  mark  a  spurious  passage, 
whereas  Aristarchus  preferred  to  append  an  obelus  to  each  line.     But  his 
glossary  seems  to  have  been  of  peculiar  value,  and  he  seems  also  to  have 
composed  a  formal  commentary  on  Homer. 

2  They  were  as  follows  :  (i)  Zenodotus'  obelus, — ,  a  sign  universally  ac- 
cepted from  the  terrible  grammarian  as  a  mark  of  spuriousness,  and  com- 
monly to  be   found   in  the  margin  of  German   texts   now-a-days.     (2) 
Leogoras'  dipk,  >-   (called  Scn-A.?;  Ka.Qa.pa.,  or  owrepjirTi/cTos),  used  rather  for 
exposition,  or  to  show  a  line  which  told  against  the  Separatists,  or  an  OTTO| 
\fy6/j.evoi>,  or  an  Attic  construction  ;  in  Aristarchus'  second  edition  it  seems 
to  have  called  attention  to  the  notes  of  the  earlier  editions.      (3)  The 
dotted  (irfpiff-ri~y/j.€vrt)  diple,  V? ,  to  denote  the  variants  from  the  edition  of 
Zenodotus,  and  afterwards  from  that  of  Crates  also.     (4)  The  asterisk,  •%•  , 
to   mark  the   genuine   verses,    in   case   of  repetitions,    whereas   the    re- 
jected duplicates  were  marked  with  both  asterisk  and  obelus.     (5)  The 
antisigma  and  the  stigme,   D  and  . ,  were  used  to  mark  repetitions  of  the 
same  idea.     It  seems  that  Aristarchus'  earlier  edition  was  accompanied  by 


38  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  in. 

There  is  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  real  merits  of 
Aristarchus.  Some  of  the  Germans  are  disposed  to  raise  him 
above  all  Homeric  critics  and  submit  to  his  authority  absolutely. 
Others,  such  as  Buttmann,  think  he  was  a  pretentious  and 
shallow  critic,  if  not  an  impostor.  As  he  has  simply  superseded 
all  the  older  texts,  so  that  all  we  know  of  Homer,  saving  stray 
quotations,  comes  from  his  recension,  we  have  not  sufficient 
materials  to  judge  him.  If  we  may  form  a  conjecture  from  the 
extreme  arrogance  of  the  man  and  his  absolute  dogmatism, 
we  shall  not  be  disposed  to  rate  him  too  highly;  and  though  he 
certainly  surpassed  most  men  in  real  grammatical  knowledge 
and  familiarity  with  epic  diction,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  he  was 
often  led  by  traditional  reasons,  and  even  by  mere  caprice,  in 
default  of,  or  in  opposition  to,  solid  grounds.  On  one  question 
certainly  he  seems  to  me  to  have  shown  great  prejudice — his 
rejection  of  the  Separatist  theory.  He  based  this,  we  are  told, 
on  no  more  sustainable  argument  than  supposed  anticipations 
of  the  Odyssey  which  he  found  in  the  Iliad,  as  well  as  on  the 
admitted  discrepancies  within  the  Iliad  itself,  and  on  these 
points  he  wrote  a  special  treatise. 

All  three  critics  were  too  straitly  bound  by  tradition  to 
venture  on  the  theory  of  large  interpolations  in  the  text,  if  we 
except  the  sound  judgment  of  Aristophanes,  that  the  end  of  the 
Odyssey  from  ^  297  was  added  by  another  hand.  They  con- 
tented themselves  with  frequent  rejection  of  what  they  considered 
spurious  lines— in  all  1160  were  thus  rejected — and  this  is 
commonly  called  athetising  (ude-t'ty).  But  possibly  Aristarchus 
did  this  too  often,  rejecting  the  genuine,  and  sparing  the 
spurious.  Constant  reference  to  his  opinion  is  preserved  in  the 
Venetian  scholia  on  the  Iliad. 

a  commentary,  but  that  the  second  was  not  so,  the  critical  marks  referring 
to  his  own  and  others'  commentaries.  His  special  essays  were  probably 
appended,  or  to  be  read  in  relation,  to  the  later  text.  All  these  matters 
are  subject  to  doubt,  and  are  inferred  from  hints  in  the  scholia  and  lexica. 
Lehrs'  book  De  Sttidiis  Horn.  Aristarchi,  and  Sengebusch's  First  Homeric 
Dissertation,  may  be  consulted  for  full  and  learned  details.  On  the  cri- 
tical signs,  the  best  book  is  now  Gardthausen's  Palaographie,  p.  288 
(Leipzig,  1879).  Cf.  also  Dindorf 's  prefaces  to  vols.  i.  and  iii.  of  the  scholia. 


CH.  in.       THE  SOURCES  OF  OUR  SCHOLIA.  39 

§  33.  But  whatever  faults  we  may  attribute  to  Aristarchus, 
his  criticism  seems  sober  and  practical  beside  that  of  Crates, 
who  founded  the  rival  school  of  Pergamus,  and  who,  under 
the  influence  of  Stoic  philosophy,  endeavoured  to  thrust  in 
allegory  where  Aristarchus  would  only  allow  ordinary  inter- 
pretation. Still  the  establishment  of  a  rival  school,  with  its 
controversies,  is  a  fortunate  circumstance,  since  it  has  preserved 
for  us  in  our  scholia  sundry  notes,  and  allusions  to  Aristarchus' 
opponents,  which  had  else  been  lost.  It  is  also  to  the  treasures 
of  this  school  that  the  Alexandrian  scholars  owed  the  replace- 
ment of  some  of  their  MSS.,  when  the  fire  of  47  B.C.  destroyed 
the  authentic  copies  of  their  great  recensions — a  loss,  how- 
ever, but  ill  compensated  by  transfers  from  the  Pergamene 
library. 

It  would  require  a  long  and  tedious  enumeration  to  give 
an  account  of  the  various  grammarians  who  carried  on  the 
work  of  the  great  masters.  I  will  mention  but  a  few  leading 
names.  Demetrius  of  Scepsis  discussed  with  care  and  acuteness 
the  geography  in  the  Iliad,  and  especially  of  the  Troad.  It  is 
to  Didymus'  book  on  Aristarchus'  recension  that  we  owe  almost 
all  our  knowledge  of  that  scholar's  work.  There  seems  no 
doubt  that  this  Didymus  was  copied,  perhaps  carelessly,  by  the 
scholiasts  of  the  Venetian  codex.  Aristonicus,  about  the  same 
time,  explained  the  marks  of  Aristarchus,  which  were  evidently 
becoming  ill-understood.  Nicanor  on  the  punctuation  of 
Homer  (Hadrian's  time),  and  Herodian  on  his  prosody  and 
accents  (M.  Aurelius),  are  well  spoken  of,  though  the  fashion 
in  .Hadrian's  day  was  to  slight  and  even  to  revile  Homer. 
From  a  compendium  of  these  four  works,  Herodian's  Homeric 
•prosody,  Nicanor  on  Homeric  punctuation,  Didymus'  account  of 
Aristarchus'  recension,  and  Aristonicus'  critical  marks,  is  drawn 
the  best  body  of  scholia  found  in  the  Marcian  codex  A  at 
Venice,  and  excerpted  in  inferior  MSS.  At  the  end  of  the 
second  century  A.D.,  independent  criticism,  if  we  except 
Porphyry's,  ceased,  and  people  began  to  make  compendiums 
and  excerpts  of  previous  works.  Porphyry  seems  to  have 
gone  carefully  into  the  artistic  merits  of  the  poems,  but  on  the 
somewhat  absurd  ground  that  they  were  to  be  treated  as  trage- 


40  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  III. 

dies.  Hence  he  applied  to  them  the  laws  laid  down  in  Aris- 
totle's Poetic  concerning  that  kind  of  poetry.1  A  mere  compi- 
lation from  various  works,  ascribed  by  Eustathius  to  Apion,  is 
still  extant,  though  in  a  bad  and  incomplete  edition. 

§  34.  This  review  has  brought  us  down  to  the  verge  of 
the  dark  ages.  If  we  ask  what  the  actual  materials  are  which 
modern  scholars  can  use  in  reconstructing  the  texts  of  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey,  we  must  separate  these  materials  into  commen- 
taries, scholia,  and  texts.  Our  oldest  and  best  commentary  is 
that  of  Eustathius,  Archbishop  of  Thessalonica,  who  wrote  in 
the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  in  Constantinople  a  careful 
Greek  commentary  on  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  He  used  not 
only  the  same  sources  as  the  extant  scholia,  but  had  access  to 
many  others  since  lost,  and  his  book  is  valuable,  though  he 
adopted  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  the  Stoics  and  the 
Pergamene  school,  in  preference  to  the  Alexandrian.  We 
have  besides  the  beginning  of  Tzetzes'  commentary  on  the 
Iliad,  Manuel  Moschopulos  on  the  first  two  books  of  the  Iliad, 
and  a  prose  paraphrase.  A  little  Homeric  lexicon  by  Apol- 
lonius  has  survived,2  and  there  are  explanations  of  Homeric 
words  and  phrases  in  the  dictionaries  of  Hesychius  and  Suidas. 

We  now  come  to  the  scholia.  These  are  short  notes 
(i/Tro/n^/iara)  added  in  the  margin  of  our  MSS.,  and  are  the 
work  of  different  hands  and  ages.  They  are  meant  for  com- 
mentaries on  the  text.  It  may  fairly  be  said  that  some  authors, 
such  as  Homer  and  Aristophanes,  would  be  often  unintelligible 
but  for  these  explanations,  which  were  added  at  a  time 
when  the  learning  of  Alexandria  yet  survived,  at  least  in 
excerpts  and  compendia.  We  must  separate  here  for  the 
first  time  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  as  the  value  of  the  scholia 
of  the  former  is  far  superior  to  that  of  the  latter.  For  a 

1  Cf.   the  curious  details  brought  together  on  this  question  in  Tren- 
delenburg's  Gram.  Grac.  de  arte  trag.  judiciortim  Reliqq.,  p.  73,  sqq.     He 
shows  that  the  quotations  from  Porphyry  are  contained  in  the  scholia  on  the 
exterior  margin  of  the  cod.  Ven.  B,  while  those  of  the  interior  margin  are 
mere  compendia  of  these  and  of  the  far  better  scholia  of  cod.  A. 

2  Edited  by  Villoison  (Paris,   1768),  and  again  by  Tollius  (Leyden, 
1788),  with  Villoison's  excellent  notes. 


CH.  in.    .        EDITIONS  OF  THE  SCHOLIA.  41 

long  time,  indeed,  the  only  scholia  known  on  the  Iliad  were 
those  called  brevia  or  Didymic  scholia,  which  were  taken 
from  various  fourteenth-century  MSS.  and  first  printed  by 
Lascaris  (Rome,  1517),  and  then  more  completely  with  those 
of  the  Odyssey  by  Aldus  (1521-8).  These  notes  seem  merely 
such  as  might  be  of  service  in  school  teaching,  and  are  very 
short  and  simple. 

The  discovery  of  the  Marcian  codex  of  the  Iliad  at  Venice, 
by  Villoison,  and  the  publication  of  its  text  and  scholia  (Venice, 
1778),  known  as  Schol.  Ven.  A,  form  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  Homeric  studies.  It  is  from  these  notes  that  we  derive 
all  our  information  about  the  several  old  editions  used  or 
produced  by  the  Alexandrian  critics.  The  text  is  also  fur- 
nished with  the  critical  marks  (ffij/zctuxrae)  of  Aristarchus  and 
his  pupils,  which  are  explained  in  a  prefatory  note.1 

The  best  edition  of  the  Venetian  scholia  A,  together  with 
the  scholia  B,  which  are  not  unique,  but  of  the  same  origin 
as  the  Townleiana  (Brit.  Mus.),  Lipsiensia,  Leidensia,  and 
Mosquensia,  was  till  lately  Bekker's  (Berlin,  1825).  We  have 
at  last  from  Cobet  and  D.  B.  Monro,  collating  for  Dindorf 
(Oxon.  1877),  a  thoroughly  critical  and,  I  suppose,  final  re- 
vision of  the  text.  La  Roche  and  C.  Wachsmuth  have  written 
short  essays  on  the  critical  marks  of  the  margin,  and  the  value 
of  the  whole  collection  has  been  sifted  in  the  essays  of  Senge- 
busch  and  Lehrs.2 

It  is  probable  that  there  was  a  copy  of  the  Odyssey  corre- 
sponding to  the  old  Marcian  Iliad  at  Venice  also  ;  but  all  efforts 
to  find  it  have  been  in  vain.  Apart  from  the  scholia  brevia, 
which  extend  to  the  Odyssey,  and  which  were  long  since 

1  Villoison's  text,  and  his  Prolegomena,  though  perpetually  referred  to, 
are  now  seldom  read.     As  most  academic  libraries  contain  the   book, 
a  fresh  perusal  of  this  great  monument   of  diligence  and  learning  may 
be  strongly  recommended.     The  style  of  the  Prolegomena  is  very  pon- 
derous, and  the  author  is  perpetually  digressing  into  all  manner  of  col- 
lateral subjects  ;  but  he  is  always  instructive.     The  account  of  the  dangers 
he  incurred  in  his  voyage  from  Upsala  to  Venice,  and  of  his  stay  there, 
is  very  amusing,  and  almost  rivals  the  famous  enumeration  of  persecutions 
by  S.  Paul. 

2  The  analysis  of  this  vast  body  of  scattered  notes  is  a  very  difficult 
task,  and  requires  the  study  of  an  elaborate  special  literature  on  the  subject. 


42  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  ill. 

known,  Cardinal  Mai  published,  from  the  Ambrosian  Library 
at  Milan,  older  and  fuller  scholia,  which,  with  some  additions 
from  Palatine  and  a  Harleian  MS.,  were  first  edited  by  Butt- 
mann  (1821),  and  now,  as  fully  and  completely  as  the  materials 
will  allow,  by  G.  Dindorf  (Oxon.  1855). 

§  35.  As  to  the  condition  of  our  texts,  it  seems  that  the 
early  mediaeval  grammarians  contented  themselves  with  critical 
notes  and  commentaries,  and  were  not  desirous  to  revise, 
so  that  what  has  come  down  to  us  is  a  sort  of  eclectic  vulgar 
text,  with  a  general  adherence  to  Aristarchus,  but  fortunately 
giving  a  good  many  readings  from  previous  editors.  We  have, 
indeed,  interesting  remains  of  an  older  date.  In  Egypt  three 
fragments  on  papyrus  were  found,  dating  not  later  than  the 
first  century  after  Christ,  and  probably  earlier.  They  con- 
tain part  of  ii  and  part  of  2.  There  is  among  the  papyri  of  the 
Louvre  a  similar  fragment  of  N  found  at  Elephantine.  These 
very  early  texts  offer  no  remarkable  variations  from  our  medi- 
seval  MSS.,  and  thus  supply  a  strong  argument  in  favour  of  the 
general  trustworthiness  of  the  transmission  of  our  Greek  classics. 
Next  in  age  come  fifty-eight  pages  of  very  curious  pictures  from 
an  old  copy  of  the  fifth  or  sixth  century,  containing  on  the 
back  of  each  picture  fragments  of  the  poem  in  capital  letters, 
very  like  in  character  to  the  oldest  New  Testament  MSS. 
These  pictures,  together  with  the  tabula  Iliaca,1  the  Odyssey 
scenes  of  the  Vatican  (just  published  by  Karl  Woermann),  and 
some  Pompeian  frescoes,  show  how  widely  illustrations  of  the 
Homeric  poems  were  circulated.  The  pictures  of  the  Am- 
brosian codex  (published  by  A.  Mai,  Milan,  1819)  are  very 
remarkable,  as  being  perhaps  the  last  really  classical  pictures 
before  the  advent  of  the  lower  mediaeval  type.  The  text  offers 
no  variants  of  importance  in  the  800  lines  it  contains  ;  it  was 
merely  added  by  way  of  explaining  the  pictures.  Next  in  age 
is  the  Syriac  palimpsest  edited  by  Cureton  (London,  1851), 
containing  several  thousand  verses.  All  these  fragments  are 
greatly  inferior  in  critical  value  to  the  Marcian  codex  A  in 
Venice,  which  dates  from  the  eleventh  century,  but  is  one  of 

1  A  marble  relief  with  illustrations  of  the  Iliad,  now  in  the  Capitoline 
Museum. 


CH.  in.  PRINCIPAL  EDITIONS  OF  THE   TEXT.          43 

the  most  precious  and  carefully  prepared  in  all  the  range  of 
our  Greek  classics.  The  Townley  and  Harleian  seem  to  rank 
next  in  value.  From  the  fourteenth  century  we  possess  a  great 
many  inferior  MSS.,  which  have  no  independent  value. 

§  36.  Bibliographical,  The  editio  princeps  of  Chalcondylas 
(Florence,  1488)  is  a  very  splendid  folio,  containing  the  lesser 
works  attributed  to  Homer  as  well  as  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 
It  is  produced  in  a  type  unfortunately  abandoned  since  Aldus 
began  to  print,1  and  is  now  one  of  the  rare  ornaments  of  a  few 
great  libraries.  The  two  Aldine  editions  which  follow  (Venice, 
1504,  1517)  are  not  to  be  named  in  comparison  with  it.  Ex- 
cept the  first  attempt  at  a  commentary  by  Camerarius,  there  is 
no  edition  of  note  till  the  very  fine  Heroic  Poets  of  Greece  of 
Stephanus  (1554).  Passing  by  Schrevelius'  edition,  with  scholia 
and  indices  (Amsterdam,  1655),  we  come  to  Josh.  Barnes  (1711) 
and  S.  Clarke  (1724-40),  with  good  notes,  and  then  to  Vil- 
loison's  learned  and  valuable  Iliad  from  the  Marcian  codex 
(1788).  Wolf  (1794),  Heyne  (1802-22),  and  Person  (1800) 
were  the  most  noted  editors  at  the  opening  of  this  century. 
In  our  own  day  the  text  has  been  further  analysed  and  fixed 
by  the  labours  of  Bekker  (1858),  La  Roche,  and  Dindorf. 
The  best  annotated  editions  are,  in  German,  those  of  Crusius, 
Faesi,  Ameis  and  Diintzer  ;  in  English,  Paley's  Iliad,  Hayman's 
and  Merry's  Odyssey  —  Nitzsch's  elaborate  commentary  on 
the  first  twelve  books  of  the  latter  had  led  the  way  (1826-40) 
— in  French,  A.  Pierron's  Iliad  (Hachette),  with  a  translation 
of  W  Prolegomena,  and  good  notes.  Ebeling's  elaborate, 
and  yet  unfinished,  Lexicon  Homericum  is  full  of  materials ; 
Autenrieth's  is  shorter,  and  a  mere  handbook.  The  very 
complete  Indices  of  Seber  (1604),  reprinted  with  Clarke's  Ed. 
(Oxon.,  1780),  and  Mr.  Prendergast  (Iliad  only),  also  deserve 
mention.  Commentaries  and  special  tracts  on  portions  of 
the  poems  are  a  library  in  themselves. 

Translations    into   all   manner  of  tongues,   and   in   every 

1  The  earlier  Greek  types  were  on  the  model  of  the  older  and  finer 
MSS.  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries.  Aldus  unfortunately  took  the 
fourteenth  century  writing  as  his  model,  and  so  permanently  injured  Greek 
printing. 


44  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  in. 

variety  of  style,  are  even  still  pouring  from  the  press,  though 
every  generation  since  the  Revival  of  learning  has  been  supply- 
ing them.  The  literature  of  these  translations  has  become 
a  special  study,  as  may  be  seen  from  Bernays'  Bonn  Programm 
(1850)  on  the  early  Latin  ones,  and  Penon's  Versiones  Homen 
Anglica  inter  se  comparatiz  (Bonn,  1861),  in  German,  W. 
Henkel  on  the  English,  and  W.  Miiller  on  the  German  versions  ; 
and  Mr.  Arnold's  Oxford  Lectures  on  translating  Homer 
(Longman,  1861).  As  has  been  well  said  by  the  last,  and, 
perhaps,  best  translators  of  the  Odyssey,  Messrs.  Butcher 
and  Lang  (1879),  every  age  has  its  own  way  of  looking  at 
these  immortal  epics.  Chapman  satisfied  the  Elizabethan 
age,  while  Pope  breathed  the  spirit  of  Queen  Anne's  period 
into  his  version ;  so  that  these  poems,  though  permanent 
English  works,  are  translations  '  from  a  lost  point  of  view.'1 
Hence  we  may  expect  no  version  to  be  final,  and  so  long  as 
Greek  letters  are  studied,  and  the  great  poems  of  Homer  read, 
countless  hands  will  repeat  the  same  fascinating,  but  never 
ultimately  satisfying  experiment.  The  Faust  of  Goethe,  which 
already  can  boast  of  forty  English  versions,  and  the  Divina 
Commedia  of  Dante,  seem  to  possess  the  same  curious  and 
distinctive  feature  of  the  highest  productions  of  human  genius. 
I  will  only  specify  a  few  of  the  successive  attempts. 

The  barbarous  version  of  the  Odyssey  into  Saturnian  verse 
by  Livius  Andronicus,  in  the  days  of  the  first  Punic  war,  stands 
alone  in  its  antiquity.  It  was  long  a  Roman  school-book, 
though  the  style  shocked  literary  men  of  succeeding  genera- 
tions, and,  if  extant,  would  be  a  curious  and  interesting  relic  of 
early  Roman  education. 

After  the  Revival  of  letters  there  were  several  Latin  and 
hexameter  versions,  from  Valla's  (1474)  to  Cunichius'  (1776), 
in  Italy.  The  Dutch  produced  a  metrical  Odyssey  by  Corn- 
horst  (1593),  then  Van  Manders'  Iliad  (1611),  a  whole  prose 
Homer  (1658),  and  sundry  other  attempts,  ending  with  the 
recent  hexameter  poem  of  C.  Vosmaer.  The  French,  besides 
older  and  now  little  known  versions,  have  Madame  Dacier's 
(1711)  and  many  others  in  the  present  century,  ending  with 
1  Cf.  also  Arnold,  op.  cit.  p.  29. 


CH.  in.  MODERN  VERSIONS.  45 

some  remarkable  prose  translations.  The  Germans  contribute 
Voss,  Donner,  and  A.  Jacob.  England  has  been  the  most 
prolific,  owing  to  a  longer  and  more  thorough  study  of  Greek. 
First  comes  Chapman,  then  Thos.  Hobbes,  Pope,  MacPher- 
son's  prose  Iliad,  then  Cowper.  In  our  own  day  it  is  almost 
hazardous  to  assert  that  any  scholar  has  not,  at  least  in  part, 
translated  Homer.  The  catalogue  of  those  which  occur  in 
any  library  is  indeed  curious.  If  we  include  short  pieces, 
Tennyson  and  Gladstone  may  be  added  to  F.  W.  Newman, 
Lord  Derby,  Sir  J.  Herschel,  Dean  Merivale,  J.  S.  Blackie, 
Worsley,  Wright,  Musgrave,  Brandreth,  and  many  others.  The 
Odyssey  of  Messrs.  S.  H.  Butcher  and  A.  Lang  deserves  special 
note  as  a  remarkable  attempt  to  render  Homer  into  antique 
prose.  Even  the  modern  Greeks  are  now  producing  para- 
phrases in  their  language,  of  which  two  (Christopoulos'  and 
Loukanis',  both  Paris,  1870)  are  cited  as  of  merit. 

The  reader  who  has  looked  through  this  mere  skeleton  list 
will  doubtless  excuse  me  from  attempting  the  task  of  criticising 
or  comparing  these  myriad  reproductions. 

Having  thus  traced  the  external  history  of  the  preservation 
of  the  poems  down  to  our  own  day,  we  shall  proceed  to  a  brief 
sketch  of  the  Homeric  controversy  in  modern  times  as  based 
upon  the  materials  set  forth  in  this  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  HOMERIC    CONTROVERSY   FROM  THE   REVIVAL 
OF   LEARNING  TO   THE   PRESENT  DAY. 

§  37.  AFTER  the  discovery  of  printing,  and  the  dissemination 
of  copies  through  Europe,  the  history  of  the  poems  concerns 
itself  no  longer  with  their  preservation,  now  assured,  but  rather 
with  their  general  reputation  and  the  criticism  of  their  compo- 
sition. The  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  could  not  but  revere  the 
name  which  they  found  celebrated  in  all  Greek  literature  as  that 
of  the  first  and  greatest  of  poets  ;  but  owing  partly  to  the  better 
knowledge  they  possessed  of  Latin,  partly  to  the  influence  of 
Dante,  partly  to  the  artificial  nature  of  their  culture  and  their 
ignorance  of  spontaneous  art,  Homer  was  not  greater  in  their 
eyes  than  Virgil — nay  rather  with  many  decidedly  inferior. 
He  was  praised  as  the  rival  and  fellow  of  Virgil,  but  not  studied 
with  any  real  care.  Voltaire,  indeed,  seems  to  have  appreciated 
the  perfection  of  the  details  of  the  Iliad  as  compared  with  its  de- 
ficiency in  plot;  and  still  earlier,  Vico  had  made  some  bold  and 
curious  guesses  about  the  mythical  character  of  Homer  himself 
as  the  ideal  representative  of  Greek  epic  poetry,  and  had  been 
followed  by  Zoega  and  Wood.  But  these  isolated  judgments 
are  of  no  importance. 

§  38.  The  first  move  in  modern  Homeric  criticism  was  the 
discovery  and  publication  of  the  older  Venetian  scholia  by 
Villoison.  The  second  and  greatest  was  the  Prolegomena  of  F.  A. 
Wolf  (1795),  based  upon  this  discovery  ;  for  the  scholia  showed 
plainly  the  doubts  and  difficulties  of  the  Alexandrian  editors,  who 
were  obliged  to  accept  and  reject  passages,  not  on  the  authority 
of  well-authenticated  manuscripts,  but  according  to  laws  of  criti- 
cism established  among  themselves,  and  based  on  taste,  and  on 


CH.  iv.  F.  A.    WOLF.  ,  47 

minute  study  of  epic  diction.  It  was  plain  that  the  manu- 
scripts which  we  possess  represent  nothing  older  or  purer  than 
the  Alexandrian  texts,  it  was  equally  plain  that  the  Alexandrians 
had  before  them  no  text  approaching  the  age  of  the  composi- 
tion of  the  poems.  Their  best  authorities  were  the  city  copies, 
which  were  posterior  to  the  age  of  Peisistratus,  and  none  of  them 
written  in  the  older  alphabet.  As  for  Peisistratus'  copy,  not 
only  had  it  disappeared  (possibly  in  the  Persian  destruction  of 
Athens),  but  there  was  no  city  copy  professing  to  represent  it 
better  than  the  rest. 

Accordingly,  Wolf  held  that  we  had  no  evidence  for  the 
writing  down  of  the  poems  earlier  than  the  commission  of 
Peisistratus.  He  showed  that  the  writing  down  of  these  long 
poems  required  not  merely  knowledge,  but  expertness  in 
writing,  and  presupposed  a  reading  public  to  take  advantage  of 
it.1  This  was  not  the  condition  of  early  poetry  in  Greece,  as 
may  be  seen  from  the  brief  and  fragmentary  remains  of  early 
hymns  and  of  Hesiodic  teaching.  The  poetry  of  the  nation 
was  rather  that  of  wandering  rhapsodes,  who  composed  short 
poems  for  special  occasions,  and  trusted  to  a  well-trained 
memory  and  to  a  traditional  style  for  their  preservation.  In  the 
days  of  Wolf  there  was  a  strong  reaction  in  taste  from  learned 
and  artificial  composition  to  folk-song  and  primitive  simplicity. 
Hence  the  rhapsodes  were  to  him  no  mere  repeaters  or  preservers 
of  Homer,  but  gifted  natural  poets,  each  pouring  out  his  pure 
and  fresh  utterance  to  a  simple  and  receptive  audience.  The 
shortness  and  independence  of  these  several  rhapsodies  were 
proved,  in  Wolfs  mind,  by  the  many  discrepancies  and  contra- 
dictions which  a  careful  examination  could  show  in  the  Iliad. 
He  would  not,  in  fact,  admit  in  it  any  conscious  or  deliberate 
plan  of  composition. 

From  these  premises  he  drew  the  conclusion  that  one 
Homer  could  not  be  the  author  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 

1  To  this  last  statement  I  demur.  A  listening  public,  with  a  taste  for 
poetry,  is  quite  sufficient,  provided  there  exist  a  literary  class  who  can  use 
writing  in  the  composition  of  their  works.  Cf.  my  arguments  on  the  ques- 
tion in  Afactmffatti  Magazine  for  February  and  April,  1879,  in  answer  to 
Mr.  Paley. 


43  HISTORY  OF   GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  IV. 

but  that  the  Iliad  in  particular  is  a  mere  aggregate  of  materials, 
which  were  accumulating  for  generations,  until  the  artists  of 
an  advanced  literary  epoch  took  it  in  hand  to  combine  and  set 
in  order  these  scattered  fragments.  This  redaction  removed 
many  traces  of  suture  and  of  discrepancy,  but  left  a  large 
number,  and  especially  the  conclusions  of  both  poems,  which 
had  been  suspected  and  condemned  even  at  Alexandria. 
Peisistratus  completed  the  work  by  authentic  written  copies 
and  orderly  recitations.  Homer,  then,  was  merely  the  symbol 
of  this  long,  secret,  national  activity  among  the  lonians,  and 
does  not  represent  an  individual  genius. 

No  work  on  Greek  philology  ever  created  such  a  stir 
in  the  world  as  this  short  book.  All  the  German  poets, 
philosophers,  and  critics  discussed  it.  Schiller,  on  sesthetic 
grounds,  declared  it  barbarous.  Goethe  wavered,  and  having 
adopted  it  in  his  youth  recanted  in  old  age.  W.  von  Humboldt 
declared  his  assent ;  and  Fichte  even  pronounced  it,  in  truly 
German  style,  to  be  a  conclusion  he  had  himself  attained 
metaphysically  and  d  priori.  On  the  whole,  with  the  aid  of 
Niebuhr,  the  two  Schlegels,  and  G.  Hermann,  the  new  theory 
may  be  said  to  have  taken  Germany  by  storm.  Nothing  in- 
dependent was  done,  either  in  France  or  England,  on  this 
question  till  the  nations  had  settled  down  after  their  great  war. 

§  39.  The  Germans  consider  G.  Hermann  as  the  principal 
writer  on  the  subject  in  the  period  following  upon  Wolf's ;  but 
his  theories  are  not  so  much  based  on  historical  data  as 
on  probable  assumptions,  and  have  therefore  been  without 
lasting  effect.  His  main  merit  was  to  see  the  great  difficulties 
in  parts  of  Wolf's  theory,  and  the  necessity  of  not  resting  con- 
tent with  his  book  as  if  it  were  a  Homeric  gospel.  He  pointed 
to  the  absurdity  of  the  Homeric  bards  confining  themselves 
to  so  small  a  portion,  not  only  of  Greek  legend,  but  even  of 
the  Trojan  war ;  then  the  apparent  sudden  silence  of  all  these 
bards  in  the  period  between  the  composition  of  Homer  and 
that  of  the  Cyclic  poems,  which  were  decidedly  later ;  lastly, 
he  pointed  to  the  universal  feeling  of  .the  unity  and  excellence 
of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  as  based  on  the  interest  and  excellence 
of  their  matter,  rather  than  on  exceptional  treatment. 


CH.  IV.  C.  HERMANN.      LACHMANN.  49 

Hence  he  assumed,  what  is  probable  enough,  that  the  di- 
dactic epic  poetry,  like  that  of  Hesiod,  is  really  older  in  Greek 
literature  ;  that  Homer  was  the  first  bard  who  struck  out  a  new 
path,  and  created  a  school  of  imitators  and  rivals  who  con- 
fined themselves,  as  he  had  done,  to  a  small  portion  of  the  ex- 
isting legends.  Hermann  assumed  no  pre- Homeric  materials 
in  Homer,  but  supposed  him  to  be  a  great  and  original  genius 
whose  work,  as  we  have  it,  is  enlarged  and  deformed  by  long 
and  disturbing  interpolations.  He  thought  the  same  poet  had 
composed  a  short  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  that  these  were  the 
basis  of  the  succeeding  poems.  But  he  confessed  himself  un- 
able to  explain  the  gap  or  silence  in  epic  poetry  from  the  old 
Homer  to  the  later  Cyclic  poems. 

The  point  in  favour  of  this  theory,  as  compared  with  Wolf's, 
is  that  the  general  plan  in  the  poems  is  regarded  as  not  the 
accidental  result  of  their  aggregation,  but  an  original  outline 
sketched  by  a  master  hand,  and  gradually  filled  in  by  expanding 
episodes. 

§  40.  On  the  other  hand,  Lachmann  was  led  by  Wolfs 
work  to  apply  similar  reasonings  to  the  old  German  epic,  the 
Nibdungen-lied,  which  he  examined  for  the  purpose  of  dis- 
covering its  claim  to  unity  in  the  relation  of  its  component 
parts.  The  result  of  this  comparative  study  was  a  more 
advanced  and  thorough-going  scepticism  concerning  the  unity 
of  the  Iliad.  He  denies,  indeed,  that  the  Iliad  is  a  mere 
aggregate  of  rudely  joined  poems  without  any  deliberately 
composed  transitions ;  but,  nevertheless,  he  believes  that  he 
has  found  so  many  inconsistencies  and  contradictions  that  he 
distinctly  asserts  the  plan  of  the  Iliad  to  be  the  afterthought 
of  a  clever  arranger,  and  not  an  original  element  in  the 
poem. 

The  views  of  Hermann  and  Lachmann  may  be  said  to 
comprise  under  them  all  the  various  theories,  or  modifications 
of  theories,  with  which  the  classical  press  of  Germany  is 
teeming,  and  which  have  caused  angry  controversies. 

§  41.  No  notable  German  scholar  of  the  present  day  ven- 
tures to  hold  the  substantial  unity  and  purity  of  either  the  Iliad 
Dr  Odyssey  in  the  sense  received  at  Alexandria,  and  still  not 

VOL.  1.— 3 


50  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  iv. 

unfrequent  in  England.  The  so-called  advocates  of  the  unity 
of  the  Iliad — Nitzsch,  Bernhardy,  Bergk,  and  a  few  others — 
advocate  it  in  a  sense  which  would  astonish  any  ancient  critic, 
or  any  modern  enthusiast  for  a  single  Homer.  Instead  of 
obelising  here  and  there  a  line,  or  pair  of  lines,  as  Zenodotus 
and  Aristarchus  had  done — a  proceeding  which,  with  all  the 
old  critics  together,  only  affected  some  1160  lines  in  the  two 
poems — these  defenders  of  the  unity  of  the  Iliad  reject  books, 
and  parts  of  books,  with  a  readiness  which  almost  destroys 
their  own  argument.  It  is,  in  fact,  no  more  than  the  theory 
of  Hermann,  that  there  was  a  short,  simple  nucleus,  enlarged 
and  injured  by  great  and  often  inconsistent  additions. 

Thus  Bergk,  the  latest  of  them,  rehandles  the  Iliad  in  a 
manner  more  arbitrary  than  has  been  done  by  advanced  advo- 
cates of  the  theory  of  aggregation.  He  assumes  that  the  original 
Homer,  a  personage  of  stern  and  grand  temper,  living  in  the 
tenth  century  B.C.,  composed  a  short,  simple  epic  of  such  merit 
that  all  additions  can  be  detected  by  their  style.  Then  there  are 
the  imitators,  of  undetermined  number,  one  of  whom  certainly 
possessed  much  grace  and  elegance,  and  was  a  true  poet, 
though  far  removed  from  the  grandeur  of  the  real  Homer. 
These  have  composed  the  famous  dialogue  of  Priam  and 
Helen  on  the  walls,  the  parting  of  Hector  and  Andromache, 
the  funeral  games,  and  the  ransoming  of  Hector — all  unworthy 
of  the  stern  original  poet.  It  verily  requires  some  assur- 
ance to  assert  that  in  a  great  literary  artist  sternness  and 
tenderness  are  inconsistent,  and  to  found  upon  it  a  difference 
of  authorship  !  But  this  is  not  all. 

In  addition  to  the  real  Homer,  and  the  gifted  but  weaker 
imitators,  comes  the  'impertinent  diaskeuast/  who  re-arranged, 
altered,  and  greatly  injured  the  poems  in  reducing  them  to  their 
present  form.  To  this  man  he  attributes  all  passages  in  which 
the  Cretan  chiefs,  Idomeneus  and  Meriones,  appear  on  the 
scene.  The  diaskeuast  had  probably  been  hospitably  treated 
in  Crete,  was  very  fond  of  eating  and  drinking;  and  so  he 
glorifies  Lemnos  for  its  wine  and  Crete  for  its  valour.  He  also 
inserted  all  the  eating  and  drinking  scenes  which  are  so  pro- 
minent in  the  Iliad,  besides  many  other  narratives,  or  parts  of 


CH.  IV.      GERMAN  VERDICT  ON  THE  ILIAD.  51 

narratives,  which  are  in  Bergk's  judgment  flippant  and  vapid 
in  tone,  though  good  literary  judges  have  read  and  admired 
them  without  any  suspicion  of  such  late  and  unworthy 
origin. 

§  42.  Nothing  can  prove  more  completely  how  the  views  of 
Wolf  and  Lachmann  have  affected  even  their  bitterest  adver- 
saries in  Germany.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  writer  of  any  note  for 
the  last  generation  in  that  country  who  has  ventured  to  uphold 
the  real  unity  of  the  Iliad  even  in  the  most  modest  way.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  professed  followers  of  Lachmann  are 
numerous  and  loud  in  proclaiming  their  victory.  His  at- 
tempt to  separate  part  of  the  Iliad  into  the  original  songs  of 
which  it  was  composed  has  been  followed  up  by  Kochly — who 
has  also  published  an  Iliad  in  sixteen  or  seventeen  separate 
songs — by  Lehrs,  by  Bonitz,  and  by  many  others.  They 
differ,  as  I  have  said,  from  the  pretended  advocates  of  unity, 
by  denying  that  there  is  any  plan  in  the  patchwork  of  the 
Iliad  beyond  what  was  brought  into  it  by  the  commission  of 
Peisistratus.  Lachmann  even  declares  such  a  notion  of  place 
as  ridiculous.  Bonitz  thinks  that  all  the  admiration  excited 
in  modern  poets  and  men  of  critical  taste  is  really  produced 
by  the  excellence  of  the  details,  and  that  this  feeling  is 
fallaciously  transferred  to  the  plot,  which  has  no  such  merit. 

All  these  critics  have  fixed  their  attention  so  firmly  on 
prying  after  discrepancies,  they  are  so  outraged  by  inconsis 
tencies  of  the  most  trifling  sort,  by  mistakes  in  the  names 
of  heroes,  by  the  re-appearance  of  slain  heroes,  by  the  in- 
accuracies of  chronology  in  the  days  and  nights  of  the  action, 
that  they  have  lost  all  sense  or  appreciation  for  the  large  unity 
of  plan  which  has  conquered  and  fascinated  the  literary  world 
foi-  more  than  twenty  centuries. 

4  43.  Thus  the  controversy  about  the  Iliad  has  narrowed 
itself  in  Germany  to  a  very  definite  issue.  All  critics  allow 
that  there  is  considerable  patchwork  in  the  poem,  that  but  a 
small  part  of  it  comes  from  a  single  author,  that  there  are 
evidences  of  the  incorporation  of  various  independent  lays. 
There  is,  of  course,  great  diversity  of  opinion  among  these 
subtle  and  dogmatic  sceptics  concerning  the  merit  of  the 


52  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  iv. 

individual  pieces  and  their  fitness  for  their  place.  What  one 
considers  splendid  old  poetry  the  next  considers  foolish  and 
vapid ;  what  one  holds  to  be  so  out  of  place  as  to  prove 
manifest  patchwork,  the  next  proves  necessary  to  the  march  of 
the  action.  Yet  upon  many  passages  they  are  agreed,  and 
have  brought  in  a  verdict  of  incongruity.  The  great  question 
still  at  issue  is  this  :  Were  these  separate  poems  brought 
together  before  the  plot  or  after  it?  Were  they  connected  by  a 
poet  who  conceived  a  large  plan,  and  who  desired  to  produce  a 
great  work  on  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  or  were  they  a  mere  aggre- 
gate brought  together  for  the  sake  of  preserving  and  publishing 
old  and  beautiful  lays,  which  by  their  mere  cohesion  formed  a 
sort  of  loose  irregular  plot,  and  by  their  several  excellence  im- 
posed a  belief  in  their  unity  upon  an  uncritical  age? 

§  44.  While  this  has  been  the  general  course  of  the  Homeric 
question  as  regards  the  Iliad  in  Germany,  scholarship  in  England 
has  followed  quite  a  different  and  isolated  path.  I  will  not  say 
that  our  English  writers  on  the  Homeric  question  are  ignorant 
of  the  labours  of  the  Germans,  especially  of  the  earlier  labours, 
which  are  for  the  most  part  written  in  Latin.  On  the  contrary, 
some  of  them — as,  for  instance,  Mure — show  a  very  wide  acquain- 
tance with  this  literature.  But  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  none 
of  them,  except  Grote,  has  been  familiar  with  German  philo- 
logy from  his  youth.  They  have  read  the  Germans  for  the 
sake  of  the  controversy,  and  when  their  minds  were  made  up ; 
so  that  both  Colonel  Mure  and  Mr.  Gladstone  study  the  Ger- 
mans in  order  to  refute  them,  while  Mr.  Paley  is  so  carried 
away  by  their  arguments  that  he  outruns  even  their  wildest 
scepticism. 

§  45.  I  will  give  a  very  brief  sketch  of  the  principal  points 
in  the  English  history  of  this  controversy.  The  arguments  of 
Wolf  had  their  effect  upon  Payne  Knight,  whose  Prolegomena 
to  his  curious  edition  (with  the  digamma  introduced),  while 
asserting  very  conservative  views  as  to  interpolations  or  aggre- 
gation of  parts  in  the  Iliad,  advocated  the  separate  origin  of 
the  two  poems.  He  urged  the  usual  grounds  for  a  difference 
of  authorship — differences  of  language,  of  mythology,  and  of 
general  treatment — sustaining  them  with  profound  learning 


CH.IV.  MURE  AND  MR.   GLADSTONE.  53 

and  great  acuteness.  This  theory  was  submitted  to  an 
elaborate  examination  and  refutation  by  Colonel  Mure,  in  his 
very  erudite  History  of  Greek  Literature — a  book  which  has 
not  received  a  tithe  of  the  attention  it  deserved,  and  which 
the  German  writers  on  the  subject  pass  over  with  a  single 
sentence — as  a  retrograde  British  work  a  generation  behind  the 
attitude  of  Wolf. 

Mure  is,  indeed,  the  most  determined  advocate  of  the  unity 
of  authorship  of  the  whole  Iliad  and  the  whole  Odyssey.  He 
will  hardly  allow  even  the  ^v\a.-ywyia  OI"  tne  ^ast  book  in  the 
Odyssey  to  be  interpolated,  and  will  only  submit  to  the  obdus 
of  Aristarchus  where  there  is  authority  for  it  in  the  old  editions 
— not  where  the  sesthetical  taste  of  the  Alexandrian  school  was 
offended.  But  he  holds  this  view  with  his  eyes  open,  and  after 
a  careful  perusal  of  all  that  the  Germans  up  to  his  day  had 
written  upon  the  subject.  Moreover,  he  makes  good  the  great 
standpoint  of  English  criticism  as  opposed  to  them  :  it  is  the 
principle  that  a  large  quantity  of  inconsistencies,  and  even  con- 
tradictions, are  perfectly  compatible  with  single  authorship. 

This  principle  has  been  further  worked  out  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone,1 who  has  added  many  illustrations  and  much  ingenious 
pleading  to  the  position  of  Mure.  He,  too,  holds  the  person- 
ality of  Homer,  his_  historical  reality,  and  that  both  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  are  the  offspring  of  his  genius.  He  has  exhausted 
his  great  ability  in  showing,  as  Mure  had  before  done,  deli- 
cate touches  of  character  consistently  applied  to  the  same 
individuals  all  through  the  poems.  It  is  well  known  that 
Aristarchus  refuted  the  Separatists  by  a  tract  proving  antici- 
pations of  the  Odyssey  in  the  Iliad.  This  argument  has  not 
been  pressed  of  late  years ;  but  every  casual  conformity  is 
urged  as  a  proof  of  unity,  while  all  inconsistencies  and  diffi- 
culties are  explained  as  the  natural  imperfections  of  a  long 
work  composed  without  writing,  in  an  uncritical  age,  and 
addressed  to  uncritical  hearers.  The  beauty  and  perfection 
of  the  suspected  books  of  the  Iliad  (I,  £1,  and  others)  are 
cited  as  proving  their  genuineness;  it  is  assumed  that  no 

1  Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age  (3  vols.,  1858)  :  luventus  Mundi  (1869), 
and  in  many  short  articles  in  the  Contemporary  and  Nineteenth  Century. 


54  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  iv. 

number  of  different  poets  could  possibly  be  so  excellent.  Even 
the  Alexandrian  rejection  of  the  conclusions  of  both  poems  is 
disallowed.  In  fact,  the  attitude  of  Mure  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
is  not  only  behind  Wolf,  it  is  distinctly  behind  Aristarchus  and 
Zenodotus.  There  is,  I  think,  no  other  question  in  Greek 
literature  where  England  and  Germany  appear  to  me  to  have 
travelled  so  long  on  such  different  lines  ;  nor  do  I  know  any 
controversy  where  the  attitude  of  the  two  nations  is  more 
separate  and  isolated,  in  spite  of  numerous  quotations  from 
one  another's  writings. 

§  46.  But  while  these  respectable  scholars  were  advocating 
the  vulgar  beliefs  of  an  uncritical  age,  Mr.  Grote,  with  a  com- 
plete study,  and,  still  more,  with  a  thorough  appreciation  of 
German  philology,  matured  his  great  chapter l  on  the  Homeric 
poems,  which  contains  (in  my  opinion)  more  good  sense  and 
sound  criticism  than  all  else  that  has  been  written  on  the 
subject  either  in  England  or  Germany ;  for,  in  addition  to 
his  great  natural  ability,  he  combined  English  good  sense, 
and  correct  literary  taste,  with  German  thoroughness  of  eru- 
dition. He  agrees  with  Payne  Knight  on  the  divided  author- 
ship of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  but  does  not  separate  them  in 
age  by  any  serious  interval.  He  advances  beyond  him  by 
admitting  what  the  Germans  had  unanimously  accepted — the 
want  of  connection  of  parts  in  the  Iliad.  The  arguments  of 
W.  Miiller,  G.  Hermann,  and  Lachmann  forced  him  to  see 
the  inconsistencies  of  the  Iliad  to  be  more  than  mere  forget- 
fulnesses.  But  he  does  not  admit  the  necessity  of  supposing 
more  than  two  authors — one  of  an  Achilleis,  the  other  of  an 
Iliad.  He  constructs  an  ingenious  theory  about  the  piecing 
together  of  these  poems,  and  the  possibility  of  resolving  the 
Iliad  into  its  component  parts.  As  to  the  hypothesis  of  an 
aggregation  of  independent  lays,  mechanically  combined  in  the 
time  of  Peisistratus,  he  refutes  it  by  arguments  so  strong  that  I 
can  hardly  conceive  them  else  than  final.  Whatever  doubts 
may  remain  as  to  his  positive  theory  on  the  construction  of  the 
Iliad,  his  general  review  of  the  German  authorities  up  to  the 
year  1854  is  of  inestimable  value  to  the  English  reader. 

1  Hist,  of  Greece,  part  i.  chap.  xxi. 


CH.  IV.  PROFESSOR  GEDDES.  55 

The  theory  of  Grote,  received  with  great  respect  and  con- 
siderable adhesion  in  Germany,  has  not  yet  triumphed  among 
us  over  the  old-fashioned  views  advocated  by  Mr.  Gladstone — 
not  at  least  generally,  for  there  are  many  English  scholars  who 
have  of  late  shown  tendencies  towards  a  critical  attitude. 

§  47.  But  after  many  years  Crete's  labours  have  borne  their 
fruit  in  the  learned  work  of  Professor  Geddes,  of  Aberdeen, 
who  has  taken  up  and  expanded  them  into  a  peculiar  and  in- 
genious theory  of  his  own.1  Accepting  the  severance  of  the 
Iliad  into  an  Achilleis  and  an  Iliad,  he  spends  much  ingenuity 
in  showing  that  the  Achilleis  is  by  a  different  and  an  earlier  poet, 
whose  psychology,  mythology,  and  personal  character  are  ruder 
and  less  artistic  than  those  of  the  later  poet,  but  who  possesses 
certain  massiveness  and  fierceness  which  are  very  striking. 
The  tastes  and  the  beliefs  of  this  poet  point,  he  thinks,  to 
a  Thessalian  origin  ;  and  this  accounts  for  such  features  as  his 
love  of  the  horse,  an  animal  common  only  in  a  few  parts  of 
Greece,  and  his  limited  geographical  knowledge,  which  is  well- 
nigh  confined  to  the  northern  ^Egean.  But  as  to  the  rest  of 
our  Iliad,  Professor  Geddes  advances  a  long  way  beyond  Grote, 
and,  indeed,  opposes  him,  holding  that  it  was  not  only  the 
work  of  one  poet,  but  that  this  poet  was  also  the  author  of  the 
Odyssey,  and  the  real  Homer.  This  conclusion  he  seeks  to 
establish  by  showing  that  the  strong  contrasts  between  the 
Achilleis  and  the  rest  of  the  Iliad  are  all  contrasts  carried  out 
in  the  Odyssey  as  compared  with  the  Achilleis.  He  is,  in  fact, 
a  chorizonlist,  or  separator,  but  draws  his  line  through  the  middle 
of  the  earlier  poem  and  not  at  its  close.  In  mythology,  in 
manners  and  customs,  in  the  use  of  peculiar  words  and 
epithets,  he  draws  out  tables  to  show  that  the  Odyssey  and 
the  Odyssean  cantos  of  the  Iliad  agree,  and  are  opposed  to  the 
Achilleid. 

With  his  separatist  arguments  I  am  perfectly  satisfied,  and 
think  he  has  brought  valuable  evidence  in  detail  to  show  the 
critical  sagacity  of  Grote  in  guessing  the  truth  on  general 
grounds  ;  but  his  positive  theory  is  vitiated  by  accepting  what 
Grote  and  all  the  men  of  his  day  accepted — the  unity  of  the 

1  The  Problem  of  the  Homeric  Poems  (1879). 


56  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  IV. 

Odyssey.  Writing,  though  in  1878,  without  regard  to  Kirch- 
hoff's  work,  he  thinks  that  any  likeness  in  the  '  Ulyssean '  cantos 
of  the  Iliad  to  any  part  of  the  Odyssey  proves  unity  of  author- 
ship in  these  cantos.  This  evidence  rather  proves  that  the 
same  school  of  poets  was  at  work  on  both  poems,  and  that 
the  framers  of  the  Odyssey  were  either  contemporaneous  with 
the  completers  of  the  Iliad,  or  copied  closely  the  Ionic  features 
which  appear  in  the  '  Ulyssean '  cantos.  I  am  still  disposed  to 
place  the  Odyssey  as  a  whole  later  than  the  Iliad,  and  'in 
the  old  age  of  Homer,'  as  the  Greek  tradition  expresses  it ;  but 
no  doubt  some  books  of  the  Iliad,  such  as  K,  ^,  and  O,  may 
be  as  late  as  the  lays  of  the  Odyssey.1 

1  This  thecry  of  Professor  Geddes  receives  curious  corroboration  from  a 
German  source  which  he  never  quotes,  and  which  may  therelbre  be  looked 
on  as  supporting  him  on  perfectly  independent  grounds.  Sengebusch,  in  his 
monumental  Dissertationes  Homerica  (prefixed  to  Dindorfs  Teubner  text 
of  Homer)  developes  a  most  important  Homeric  theory,  altogether  in  pur- 
suance of  the  remaining  fragments  of  Aristarchus'  criticism,  which  is  to  him 
the  infallible  guide  in  these  matters.  Adopting  from  Aristarchus  the  Attic 
origin  of  the  Homeric  epic,  he  believes  the  tradition  that  Homer,  or  his 
parents,  or  at  any  rate  his  poetry,  passed  with  the  Ionic  migration  to  los, 
then  to  Smyrna,  and  that  there,  in  the  new  Ionic  home,  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  saw  the  light.  But  he  also  holds  that  epic  poetry  in  Athens  was 
not  indigenous,  and  came  with  Eumolpus,  as  the  legend  says,  from  Pierian 
Thrace  or  Thessaly,  the  original  home  of  the  Olympian  worship  of  the 
Muses.  These  Thracian  singers  separated  into  Heliconian  (Bceotian) 
and  Attic,  and  from  the  latter  arose  the  poet  or  the  school  which  passed 
into  Ionia.  Moreover,  Sengebusch  rejects  all  arguments  to  prove  that 
the  Odyssey  is  younger  than  the  Iliad,  or  by  a  different  school  of  poets 
— this,  too,  following  in  the  wake  of  Aristarchus.  In  all  its  main  features 
this  theory  of  Sengebusch,  which  is  sustained  with  masterly  ability,  and 
with  a  knowledge  of  the  Homeric  scholia  such  as  few  possess,  is  upon  the 
same  lines  as  Professor  Geddes'  book,  though  Sengebusch  divides  his 
homage  for  Aristarchus  with  his  homage  for  his  master  Lachmann  so  far 
as  to  admit  against  Aristarchus  that  a  school  of  bards  working  together  may 
have  composed  the  poems,  but  within  a  very  few  years,  as  the  Nibehmgen- 
lied\s  said  to  have  been  put  together  between  1190  and  1210  A.  D.  Thus 
Sengebusch  would  hold  that  the  earlier  epics  composed  in  Thrace  or  Attica 
had  disappeared,  while  Professor  Geddes  holds  that  they  have  distinctly 
survived  in  the  Achjlleid.  If  our  English  scholars  would  but  acquaint 
themselves  with  the  rest  of  European  study  on  their  subjects,  some  general 
agreement  might  not  be  impossible. 


CH.iv.  MR.  F.  A.  PA  LEY.  57 

§  48.  The  atomistic  theory  of  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey  has, 
moreover,  received  unexpected  support  from  the  rise  of  com- 
parative mythology  into  philological  importance.  For  upon 
this  theory  the  legends  of  the  siege  of  Troy  are  mere  echoes 
of  immensely  older  solar  myths  ;  the  names  of  the  heroes 
are  adapted  from  those  of  solar  phenomena  ;  and  extreme 
easiness  of  belief  on  this  point  is  compensated  by  a  corre- 
sponding scepticism  as  to  the  age  of  their  combination  into 
larger  unities.  The  most  prominent  advocate  of  this  view  is 
Mr.  F.  A.  Paley,  who  not  only  accepts  the  destructive  criti- 
cism of  Wolf,  Lachmann,  and  all  the  Germans,  but  even 
refuses  to  the  commission  of  Peisistratus  the  fabrication  of  the 
poems,  and  believes  that  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  did  not  receive 
their  present  form  till  the  time  of  Plato.1  He  bases  this 
judgment  on  the  facts  (  i  )  that  the  quotations  from  Homer  in 
earlier  authors  do  not  correspond  with  our  text;  (2)  that  the 
earlier  art  of  the  Greeks  in  sculpture,  vase  painting,  and  tragedy 
seems  to  have  borrowed  very  little  from  our  present  text, 
though  perpetually  reproducing  other  Trojan  legends  ;  (3)  that 
there  are  late  forms  of  language  in  the  poems,  and  blundering 
archaicisms  ;  (4)  that  the  common  use  of  writing,  required  for 
the  composition  and  dissemination  of  the  poems,  cannot  be 
proved  earlier  than  the  days  of  Pericles.  He  advances  to  the 
position  that  possibly  Antimachus  of  Colophon,  or  some  obscurer 
contemporary,  put  our  Iliad  and  Odyssey  together  from  loose 
materials  —  in  the  words  of  Dio  Cassius,  'having  got  rid  of 
Homer,  he  introduces  to  us  instead  Antimachus  of  Colophon, 
a  poet  whose  very  name  we  hardly  knew.'  What  we  do  hear 
of  Antimachus  is  this  :  that  he  was  a  notably  frigid  and  unsuc- 
cessful epic  poet,  contemporary  with  Plato  ;  that  his  poems 
were  extant,  and  are  quoted  in  the  Venetian  scholia  by  the 
Alexandrian  critics  ;  that  he  prepared  an  edition  of  the  Iliad, 
which  is  quoted  constantly  in  the  same  scholia  as  one  of  those 
,  and  as  inferior  to  and  more  recent  than  the  city 


1  The  following  tracts  contain  Mr.  Paley's  various  restatements  of  his 
theory  :  On  Qidntus  Smyrnccus  &c.  (1876)  ;  Homerus  Periclis  estate,  &*c. 
(1877)  ;  Homcri  qutz  nunc  extant,  &°<r.  (1878)  ;  and  his  article  in  Macmil- 
laris  Magazine  for  March,  1879. 
3* 


58  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  iv. 

editions,  when  it  differs  from  them.  These  facts  surely  dispose 
of  the  claim  of  any  such  new  Homer,  if  it  were  not  already 
sufficiently  absurd  to  imagine  the  noiseless  and  unnoticed  birth 
of  the  two  great  epics  in  a  literary  and  critical  age. 

It  is  moreover  only  by  inventing  an  impossible  epoch  that 
Mr.  Paley  has  found  a  date  for  the  composition  of  the  poems. 
He  places  it  after  the  Tragic  poets  and  before  Plato,  who  knows 
and  quotes  our  text.  But  Sophocles  and  Euripides  were  com- 
posing tragedies  until  Plato  was  of  age,  and  the  latest  of  these 
plays  show  no  greater  familiarity  than  those  of  ^Eschylus  with 
our  Homer.  This  silence  then  of  the  dramatists  must  have 
been  intentional,  and  proves  nothing  for  Mr.  Paley.1 

Again,  the  absence  of  reference  in  Greek  tragedy  to  the 
subjects  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  cannot  be  explained  by  their 
non-existence  as  epics,  for  it  would  equally  demonstrate  the 
non-existence  of  the  separate  lays  which  compose  them,  and 
would  thus  prove  infinitely  too  much,  as  not  even  Mr.  Paley 
will  assert  that  the  materials  of  the  epics  were  not  old.  If  they 
existed  as  separate  lays,  their  excellence  would  have  secured 
their  frequent  imitation,  but  for  the  only  tenable  reason — the 
conscious  abstaining  of  later  Greek  art  from  touching  these  great 
masterpieces.  Thus  the  Odyssey  carefully  avoids  all  iteration 
of,  or  even  allusion  to,  the  Iliad. 

The  assertion  of  the  late  dissemination  of  writing  in  Greece 
has  been  disproved  by  the  actual  existence  of  old  inscriptions. 

I  cannot  here  turn  aside  to  discuss  the  linguistic  arguments 
of  Mr.  Paley,  but  will  only  refer  to  Mr.  Sayce's  supplementary 
chapter  in  this  volume,  where  it  is  shown,  with  a  full  apprecia- 
tion of  Mr.  Paley's  objections,  that  no  really  recent  origin  can 
be  inferred  from  the  grammatical  complexion  of  our  text  I 
will  add,  moreover,  that  the  newer  researches  into  Homeric 
language  prove  in  many  respects  not  its  recent,  but  its  exceed- 
ingly ancient  complexion.  This  is,  I  believe,  more  strictly  the 
case  with  Homeric  syntax,  so  far  as  it  has  been  examined. 

§  49.  The  history  of  criticism  on  the  Odyssey,  which  has 

1  The  reasons  of  ./Eschylus,  the  father  of  tragedy,  for  preferring  other 
legends  than  Homer's  are  well  explained  by  Nitzsch  in  the  second  volume 
of  his  Sagenpoesie  der  Griechen. 


CH.  iv.  A.  KIRCHHOFFS  THEORY.  59 

been  necessarily  touched  in  the  foregoing  sketch,  is  somewhat 
simpler  than  that  of  the  Iliad.  Wolf,  who  felt  so  strongly  the 
piecemeal  character  of  the  Iliad,  declares  himself  as  struck  at 
every  fresh  perusal  with  the  harmony  and  unity  of  the  Odyssey. 
Grote,  who  wonders  that  critics  have  commenced  with  the 
more  complicated  and  difficult  poem,  asserts  that  the  question 
of  unity  would  never  have  been  raised  had  the  Odyssey  alone 
been  preserved.  The  most  trenchant  dissectors  of  the  Iliad, 
and  those  who  stoutly  maintain  it  to  be  an  aggregate  without 
any  presiding  plan  among  the  authors  of  its  fragments,  confess 
that  the  Odyssey  differs  in  the  much  greater  method  and  clear- 
ness of  its  structure,  and  at  least  represents  the  work  of  a  far 
more  experienced  arranger.  Nevertheless,  the  Germans  could 
not  but  admit  large  interpolations.  Even  Nitzsch,  Baumlein, 
Schomann,  Bergk,  and  other  defenders  of  its  unity,  admit  this, 
nor  do  any  of  them  maintain  the  conclusion  (from  4>  296  to 
the  end)  which  Aristophanes  had  already  rejected. 

But  the  effect  of  pulling  to  pieces  the  Iliad  at  last  began 
to  tell  on  the  Odyssey.  The  task  of  hunting  for  supposed 
discrepancies  and  the  sutures  of  divers  accounts  is  too  con- 
genial to  the  German  professor,  and  too  well  suited  to  his 
tone  of  thinking,  to  permit  so  large  and  complicated  an  epic  as 
the  Odyssey  to  escape  his  censure.  So,  beginning  from  A. 
Jacob,  or  Bekker,  but  not  till  about  1850,  a  series  of  acute 
monographs  have  assailed  the  consistency  of  the  Odyssey,  and 
endeavoured  to  show  that  this  poem  also  is  made  up  ol 
several  special  songs,  at  least  four  in  number,  with  inter- 
polations besides.  By  far  the  ablest  of  these  critics  and  their 
acknowledged  master  is  A.  Kirchhoff,1  whose  views  are  now 
generally  adopted  and  developed  by  the  Atomistic  school. 

While  this  writer  shares  with  his  countrymen  their  over- 
subtlety,  and  the  want  of  a  sound  sesthetical  judgment  as  to 
what  is  good  and  bad,  or  as  to  what  is  excusable  or  inex- 
cusable, in  an  old  poet  reciting  to  an  unlettered  and  uncritical 
audience,  he  nevertheless  shows  with  real  force  many  evidences 
of  patching  in  the  Odyssey  which  had  hitherto  escaped  other 
scholars.  tie  makes  it  very  probable  that  the  advice  of 

1  Die  Composition  der  Odyssee  (Berlin,  1869). 


60  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  IV. 

Athene  to  Telemachus  in  a  is  made  up  not  very  skilfully  from 
the  subsequent  narrative.  Still  more  clearly  he  shows  how  the 
action  is  too  manifestly  delayed  by  the  absence  of  any  direct 
reply  of  Odysseus  to  the  point-blank  question  of  Arete  as  to 
his  name  and  family.1  He  also  shows  grounds  for  asserting 
that  the  long  narrative  (x-p)  put  into  the  first  person  in  Odysseus' 
mouth  was  adopted  from  older  narratives  in  the  third  person. 
He  discovers  two  inconsistent  reasons,  one  natural  and  the 
other  miraculous  (v  429),  for  the  non-recognition  of  Odysseus. 
He  believes  therefore  that  the  old  nostos  of  Odysseus  was 
greatly  enlarged,  and  endeavours  to  show,  on  various  grounds, 
that  this  took  place  somewhere  about  Ol.  30.  His  theory 
seems  very  parallel  to  that  of  Grote  on  the  Iliad,  who  holds 
the  shorter,  and  I  think  older,  Wrath  of  Achilles  to  have  been 
expanded  by  the  borrowing  of  whole  books  from  a  longer 
Iliad. 

§  50.  The  examination  of  particular  passages  throughout  the 
Odyssey  has  not  yet  been  carried  out  by  the  Germans  with 
their  accustomed  detail,  but  enough  has  been  done  to  bring 
the  latest  advocates  of  its  unity,  Bergk  and  Faesi,  to  admit 
large  interpolations.  I  do  not  think  the  theory  of  a  me- 
chanical aggregation  by  Peisistratus  is  now  held  by  any  man 
of  sense  in  Germany ;  it  being  universally  allowed  that  the 
plan  is  an  essential  part  of  the  composition,  and  that  it  is 
considerably  older  than  the  famous  commission.  Mr.  Paley 
alone  ventures  to  class  it  in  this  respect  along  with  the  Iliad, 
and  bring  down  its  compilation  to  those  well-known  and  critical 
days  when  every  new  poem  was  named  and  claimed  by  a  jealous 
author. 

The  controversy  concerning  the  composition  of  the  Odyssey 
is  growing  hot  in  Germany,  and  is  likely  to  occupy  a  leading 
place  for  some  years  to  come ;  but,  as  well  as  I  can  make 
out,  the  main  point  at  issue  is  not  quite  the  same  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Iliad.  The  theory  of  aggregation  of  short  lays 
being  very  improbable,  and  that  of  a  plan  guiding  the  compo- 
sition or  adaptation  of  the  lesser  unities  being  generally 

1  Cf.  the  interpolation  o  270-97  with  0  209,  sq.  ;  and  ij  838,  to  which 
no  answer  is  vouchsafed  until  •  19. 


en.  iv.  PRESENT  STATE   OF  THE  CONTROVERSY.6i 

accepted,  it  remains  to  account  for  the  numerous  passages 
which  are,  in  the  opinion  of  German  critics,  out  of  harmony 
with  this  plan,  and  so  inconsistent  with  it  that  they  cannot 
have  been  composed  by  the  poet  who  framed  the  general  nar- 
rative. On  the  one  hand,  the  school  of  Kirchhoff,  represented 
by  Friedlander,  Bonitz,  Hartel,  and  others,  hold  that  these 
passages  l  are  vamped  together,  or  arranged  by  the  poet  who 
was  uniting  the  adventures  of  Telemachus  with  the  return  of 
Odysseus,  and  who  framed  the  main  narrative  of  Odysseus' 
travels  as  a  recital  by  the  hero  himself.  They  hold  that 
original  passages  were  deliberately  left  out,  or  changed  into  the 
form  in  which  we  now  have  them,  and  that  the  unskilfulness 
with  which  this  has  been  done  lets  us  see  when  and  why  it 
has  been  undertaken.  Kirchhoff  rejects  altogether  as  un- 
scientific the  assumption  of  interpolations,  unless  a  distinct 
reason  can  be  assigned  which  prompted  such  interpolation. 

This  great  principle,  which  ought  to  become  a  canon 
in  criticism,  is  a  terrible  blow  to  the  speculations  of  his 
opponents,  who  accordingly  attack  him  vehemently.  Of 
these  Diintzer,  Heimreich,  Kammer,  and  Bergk  maintain 
that  they  can  restore  the  primitive  form  of  the  Odyssey 
by  merely  extending  the  proceeding  of  Aristarchus,  and 
rejecting  as  interpolations  such  passages  as  are  inconsis- 
tent in  thought,  or  unworthy  in  style,  when  compared  with 
the  genuine  poetry  of  the  Odyssey.  They  allow  large  room 
to  critical  taste,  and  accordingly  differ  widely  as  to  the  merit 
or  demerit  of  sundry  suspected  passages.  To  assert  the  unity 
of  the  Odyssey  in  any  honest  or  real  sense  is  now  nearly  as 
obsolete  in  Germany  as  it  is  to  assert  the  unity  of  the  Iliad. 
It  is  even  very  unusual  to  find  competent  critics,  like  Senge- 
busch,  who  will  assert  that  the  Odyssey  and  the  Iliad  even 
in  part  come  from  one  poet  or  from  poets  of  the  same 
age  and  school.  Professor  Geddes  is  led  to  this  view  by  as- 
suming the  Odyssey  to  be  one  and  indivisible,  and  finding 
close  correspondences  in  certain  parts  of  the  Iliad ;  Senge- 
busch  evidently  by  the  authority  of  Aristarchus,  who  asserted 

1  Such  as  o  269-302,  M  370-390,  v  94  compared  with  o  50  (the  same  day). 


62  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE,     CH.  IV. 

the  author  of  the  Iliad  to  have  anticipated  the  Odyssey  in  many 
of  his  allusions.1 

§  51.  A  calm  review  of  this  long  controversy  suggests 
several  curious  reflections,  which  have  so  large  an  application 
that  they  can  hardly  be  here  out  of  place.  The  first  point 
which  strikes  us  is  the  remarkable  contrast  of  attitude  be- 
tween the  English  and  German  critics.  The  Germans,  one 
and  all,  lay  the  greatest  stress  on  matters  of  detail;  and  it  is 
quite  an  admitted  axiom  among  them  that  any  passage  incon- 
sistent with  the  general  argument,  or  illogical,  or  merely  re- 
peating a  previous  idea,  cannot  be  genuine.  Of  course  they 
quarrel  violently  over  their  facts,  some  declaring  against  pas- 
sages which  others  assert  to  be  necessary  to  the  text  and  of  the 
highest  importance.  Secondly,  it  is  generally  asserted  among 
them,  though  not  universally  admitted,  that  passages  of  inferior 
merit  come  from  the  hand  of  interpolators,  and  are  also  to  be 
rejected;  but  as  the  question  of  poetic  merit  is  purely  sub- 
jective, and  as  the  Germans  are  not  over-competent,  though 
very  positive  as  regards  it,  the  admission  of  this  principle  ne- 
cessarily destroys  all  chance  of  ultimate  agreement.  Thirdly, 
it  seems  tacitly  assumed  by  them  all,  that  all  the  interpola- 
tors or  imitators,  or  later  poets,  if  such  there  were,  must  be 
inferior  to  the  older  and  more  original  bards.  Without  this 
assumption,  the  second  principle  is  in  absolute  jeopardy ;  and 
yet  why  may  it  not  constantly  be  false?  Thus  the  poet  of  the 
last  book  of  the  Iliad,  generally  believed  to  be  later  than  the 
rest,  is  surely  a  poet  of  the  very  first  order,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  any  fair  critic  this  book  must  be  held  superior  to  many  of 
those  which  precede  it.  It  is  even  highly  conceivable  that  the 
very  excellence  of  a  later  lay  might  be  the  cause  of  its  recep- 
tion in  an  older  and  poorer  composition. 

The  English,  on  the  other  hand,  are  all  impressed  with  the 
fact  that  no  large  plan  can  be  carried  out  without  a  great  deal 
of  inaccuracy  in  the  details,  even  in  critical  days ;  they  cite 
modern  poets  and  novelists  who  have  been  guilty  of  the  grossest 
blunders  of  this  kind ;  they  maintain  that  such  things  are  abso- 

1  All  the  works  of  the  German  authors  mentioned  will  be  found  enume- 
rated in  the  notes  to  Bonitz'  fourth  edition  of  his  excellent  pamphlet  On  the 
Origin  of  the  Homeric  Poems. 


en.  iv.  NATIONAL  ISOLATION  IN  SCHOLARSHIP.  63 

lutely  to  be  piedicted  in  long  poems,  composed  without  writing, 
for  an  uncritical  audience,  in  an  uncritical  age.  They  regard 
all  the  dissection  of  details  by  the  Germans  as  the  result  of  ir- 
relevant subtlety,  provided  a  general  harmony  of  plan,  of  diction, 
and  of  character  can  be  established.  They  have  taken  great 
pains  to  show  such  harmony,  especially  in  the  characters, 
and  have  even  applied  psychological  analysis  to  explain  away 
great  inconsistencies,  as  in  the  cases  of  Agamemnon  and  Hector. 
This  contrast  of  attitude  is  so  strong  that  it  has  blinded  each 
nation  to  the  importance  of  what  has  been  said  by  the  other, 
unless  we  admit  the  explanation  that  few  scholars  of  either 
nation  are  able  to  appreciate  accurately  the  force  of  an  argument 
in  the  tongue  of  the  other.  They  read,  indeed,  and  quote  each 
other ;  but  it  is  certain  that  to  apprehend  and  weigh  the  force 
of  an  intricate  and  tedious  polemical  statement,  the  reader 
must  be  able  to  run  along  quite  easily  in  the  language  of  the 
writer.  It  is  the  absence  of  this  facility  which  produces  both 
the  general  contempt  and  the  occasional  veneration  shown 
by  the  two  nations  for  each  other's  work.  The  natural  results 
have  followed.  Each  side  spoils  by  exaggeration  a  very  strong 
case.  While  the  Germans  exhibit  a  ridiculous  pedantry  in  many 
of  their  criticisms,  and  often  rouse  the  astonishment  of  the  reader 
.by  the  dulness  of  their  literary  judgments,  they  have  certainly 
made  good  too  many  flaws  and  contradictions  to  be  overlooked 
and  explained  away.  While  the  English  are,  on  their  side, 
too  subtle  in  discovering  harmonies,  and  over-generous  in  con- 
doning blunders,  they  have  certainly  made  a  strong  case  for  a 
general  unity  of  plan  in  both  poems,  and  their  arguments  on 
this  point,  if  read  with  any  care,  might  have  made  the  Germans 
less  confident  in  their  assumptions.  There  is  but  one  critic — 
Grote — who  seems  really  at  home  in  the  writings  of  both  sides; 
accordingly  he  has  propounded  an  intermediate  theory  on  the 
Iliad,  which  is,  I  conceive,  not  far  from  the  truth.  Had  he 
continued  to  study  the  question  after  Kirchhoff's  analysis  of 
the  Odyssey  became  known,  he  might  have  modified  his  views 
on  this  poem.  The  absence  of  all  reference  in  his  notes  to 
the  work  of  KirchhofF  makes  it  plain  that  he  had  not  followed 
up  the  controversy  beyond  the  date  of  his  fourth  edition. 


CHAPTER  V. 

GENERAL    REMARKS     UPON     THE   ORIGIN   AND    THE 
CHARACTER   OF   THE   HOMERIC   POEMS. 

§  52.  IT  will  not  be  here  necessary  to  give  a  formal  analysis 
of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  inasmuch  as  the  texts  are  in  every 
scholar's  hands,  and  even  those  who  are  not  familiar  with 
Greek  can  study  them  in  many  excellent  English  translations. 
For  our  purpose  it  will  be  sufficient  to  sum  up  the  general  results 
attained  by  the  long  controversy  on  their  origin,  and  offer  some 
suggestions  as  to  the  points  decided,  and  the  points  still  in 
doubt.  It  is  hardly  requisite  to  add  a  word  on  the  literary 
aspects  of  the  poems,  or  to  undertake  to  assist  the  student  in 
his  survey  and  his  appreciation  of  them. 

Looking  in  a  broad  way  at  the  arguments  for  and  against 
the  unity  of  each  poem,  as  bearing  upon  the  unity  or  di- 
versity of  authorship,  we  may  say  that  there  is  no  contro- 
versy in  which  each  side  has  been  more  successful  in  proving 
its  case,  and  yet  has  more  signally  failed  to  overthrow  its 
opponents.  This  is  the  impression  which  the  controversy 
will  make  upon  most  unbiassed  readers.  As  long  as  we  study 
the  advocates  of  the  single  author,  so  many  undesigned  coin- 
cidences, so  many  hidden  harmonies,  such  consistency  in  the 
drawing  of  character,  such  uniformity  in  diction — in  fact,  such 
a  cloud  of  witnesses  are  adduced,  that  the  poem  seems  cer- 
tainly the  plan  of  a  single  mind.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
we  turn  to  the  subtler  analyses  of  destructive  critics,  they 
show  us  such  a  crowd  of  inconsistencies,  such  wavering  in 
the  drawing  of  character,  such  forgetfulness  of  any  general 
plan,  such  evident  traces  of  suture  and  agglomeration,  that  the 


CH.  v.    CONTRASTS  OF  ILIAD  AND    ODYSSEY.         65 

poem  falls  in  sunder,  and  discloses  a  series  of  ill-matched 
fragments.  But,  as  the  advocates  of  unity  are  unable  to  smooth 
over  these  breaks  and  haitings,  so  the  advocates  of  plurality  are 
unable  to  destroy  the  strong  impression  produced  in  favour  of 
a  fairly  consistent  and  harmonious  plan.  In  fact,  I  am  distinctly 
of  opinion,  that  the  moderate  and  critical  advocates  of  the 
general  unity  even  of  the  Iliad,  as  conceived  and  carried  out 
by  a  single  genius,  hold  the  strongest  and  the  most  durable 
position.  But  hitherto,  and  especially  in  England,  they  have 
ruined  their  case  by  wild  exaggerations,  and  by  putting  a  greater 
strain  upon  our  faith  than  it  will  bear.  *v 

§  53.  Thus,  for  example,  they  not  only  insist  upon  the 
unity  of  authorship  of  each  poem  separately,  but  that  both 
are  the  work  of  the  same  man.  This  is  one  of  the  points 
which  modern  criticism  has,  in  my  opinion,  finally  decided 
in  the  negative.  In  the  absence  of  any  good  evidence  for 
the  common  authorship  of  the  poems,  the  differences  are 
quite  sufficient  to  prevent  us  from  assuming  so  improbable 
a  hypothesis.  The  whole  tone  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
is,  to  my  thinking,  contrasted.  The  poet  of  the  Odyssey 
is  more  quiet  and  reflective ;  he  writes  as  a  poet  by  pro- 
fession, and  alludes  to  others  of  his  class  as,  attached  to 
various  courts.  He  lives  and  moves  not  in  Asia  Minor,  and 
close  to  the  Mount  Olympus  of  Bithynia,  but  in  western 
Greece,  and  with  his  interests  turning  towards  the  fabled 
wealth  of  the  western  Mediterranean.1  To  him  Mount 
Olympus  is  not  a  snow-clad  visible  peak,  but  a  blessed  habi- 
tation of  the  gods,  where  frost  and  storm  are  unknown.  The 
lions  that  are  so  perpetually  stalking  through  the  coverts  and 
prowling  about  the  folds  in  the  Iliad,  are  only  described  five 

1  On  the  other  hand,  Bergk  (LG.  i.  p.  741)  acutely  points  out  that 
the  troubles  of  the  city  of  Erythrse,  which  are  repeated  from  the  history  of 
Ilippias  by  Athenjeus  (vi.  259),  have  so  marked  an  analogy  to  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  suitors  in  Ithaca — even  the  name  of  Irus  recurring — that  he 
believes  the  poet  of  the  Odyssey  to  have  lived  in  the  neighbouring  and 
closely  connected  Chios,  and  to  have  painted  his  scenes  from  contem- 
porary history.  But  a  temporary  sojourn  would  have  been  sufficient  to 
suggest  the  subject,  and  hence  Bergk's  argument  can  only  prove  that  the 
poet  knew  Erythrre,  not  that  he  lived  at  Chios. 


C6  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      en.  v. 

separate  times  in  the  Odyssey,  and  once  at  least  with  a  com- 
plete ignorance  of  their  habits.1  Above  all,  there  is  a  careful 
avoidance  of  all  direct  allusion  to  the  Iliad,  which  seems 
nevertheless  distinctly  presupposed  by  the  poet  This  is  hardly 
explicable  if  both  proceeded  from  the  same  hand,  but  is  easily 
reconcilable  with  the  attitude  of  a  conscious  rival  and  fol- 
lower. But  all  these  details  are  as  nothing  when  compared 
with  the  difference  of  tone,  which  is  perfectly  convincing  to 
those  who  feel  it. 

The  arguments  adduced  against  these  reasons  are,  in  my 
opinion,  either  of  no  intrinsic  weight,  or  based  upon  a  grave 
misstatement  of  evidence.  First  comes  the  d  priori  assertion, 
that  the  coexistence  or  close  succession  of  two  poets  of  such 
genius  is  inconceivable.  But  we  may  reply,  that  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Odyssey  is  perhaps  a  century  or  more  subsequent 
to  that  of  the  Iliad,  and,  in  any  case,  whatever  the  law  of  the 
appearance  of  poetic  genius  may  be,  history  shows  that  the  coex- 
istence of  the  greatest  poets  is  rather  the  rule  than  the  exception. 

§  54.  Next  comes  the  confident  assertion,  that  the  consistent 
tradition  of  the  Greeks  assigned  the  two  poems  to  the  same 
author.  This  is  a  serious  misstatement,  and  the  more  likely  to 
mislead  because  it  is  not  absolutely  false.  The  real  state  of 
the  facts  is  as  follows.  When  we  examine  the  traditions  of  the 
earliest  historical  age  in  Greece,  we  find  ascribed  to  Homer, 
not  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  alone,  but  a  vast  body  of  epic 
literature,  including  a  collection  of  Hymns,  and  several  comic 
poems,  in  some  of  which  there  are  even  passages  in  iambic 
metre  alternating  with  hexameters.  Above  all,  let  it  be  remem- 
bered that  some  of  the  cyclic  epics,  then  commonly  attributed 
to  Homer,  were  composed  by  known  poets,  and  within  histori- 
cal times.  The  name  of  Homer  was,  therefore,  used  in  the 
same  general  way  as  we  usually  speak  of  the  Psalms  of  David, 
though  many  of  them  not  only  make  no  claim  to  be  composed 
by  David,  but  are  even  distinctly  assigned  to  other  authors.  In 
Greek  literature  the  names  of  Hesiod  and  of  Hippocrates  were 

1  Cf.  8  791,  £  130,  i  292,  x  4°2>  with  5  335,  repeated  in  p  126,  where 
a  doe  is  represented  as  leaving  her  young  in  a  lion's  lair — a  perfect  ab- 
surdity. Lions  are  simply  mentioned  a  few  times  in  addition  (:c  212-8, 
8456,  A  610). 


CH.  v.       EVIDENCE  FOR  A   SINGLE  HOMER.  67 

used  in  the  same  manner  to  denote  a  whole  school  of  a  pe- 
culiar kind. 

This  simple  and  uncritical  attitude  reaches  down  to  the 
days  of  Pindar,  who  seems  to  ascribe  all  the  cyclic  epics  to 
Homer,  and  recognises  no  other  early  poet  except  Hesiod. 
The  critical  labours  of  the  commission  of  Peisistratus,  and  of 
such  men  as  Theagenes  of  Rhegium,  began  to  open  men's  eyes 
to  the  impossibility  of  holding  this  view.  Herodotus  questions 
the  Homeric  authorship  of  the  Cypria  and  the  Epigoni.  Plato 
only  once  cites  the  Cypria,  and  as  the  work  of  an  unknown  poet. 
He  appears  from  his  other  numerous  quotations  to  have  recog- 
nised only  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  as  genuine  ;  whereas  Thucy- 
dides  had  still  acknowledged  the  Hymns  as  such,  and  still  later 
Aristotle  quotes  the  Margites  as  a  poem  of  Homer. 

It  appears,  then,  that  of  all  our  authorities  on  this  question, 
down  to  the  Alexandrian  epoch,  there  is  only  one  (Plato)  who 
seems  to  hold  that  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  these  alotic, 
were  the  work  of  a  single  Homer.  Nor  is  even  this  to  be 
asserted  positively,  but  merely  as  an  inference  from  his  silence 
on  the  pseudo-Homerica,  or  where  he  notes  the  existence  of 
such  apocryphal  poems.  We  rather  find  successive  critics  dis- 
allowing work  after  work  which  had  been  attributed  to  the 
author  of  the  Iliad,  and  we  find  that  the  two  poems  which 
resisted  this  disintegrating  process  longest  were  the  Odyssey 
and  Margites.  It  is  even  quite  possible  that  the  earliest  attacks 
on  the  Odyssey  may  have  preceded  Aristotle's  time. 

But  it  must  be  kept  in  mind  that  those  who  may  have 
allowed  the  Homeric  authorship  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
after  rejecting  the  rest,  were  opposing  a  feeling  the  very  reverse 
of  that  which  they  are  now  quoted  as  opposing.  They  pro- 
tested against  too  many  works  being  ascribed  to  the  poet ;  they 
are  now  quoted  as  if  they  had  protested  against  too  few  being 
ascribed  to  him.  This  is  a  totally  different  question,  and  one 
which  they  did  not  examine.  The  so-called  consistent  evidence 
of  all  old  tradition  as  to  this  unity  of  authorship  is  really  only 
the  evidence  of  those  who  believed  that  every  epic  came 
from  Homer  ;  then  of  those  who  believed  that  a  great  many 
epics  and  other  poems  came  from  Homer ;  finally,  of  those  who 


68  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       en.  V. 

were  so  occupied  in  rejecting  other  weaker  claims  upon  his 
name,  that  they  had  not  yet  thought  of  discussing  the  claims  of 
the  Odyssey. 

§  55.  That  day,  however,  did  come  at  last,  and  there  was  a 
school  whose  members  carried  their  scepticism  to  this  point. 
What  its  fate  would  have  been  is  hard  to  say,  had  not  the  great 
Aristarchus  crushed  it  by  his  authority.  He  was  determined  to 
put  down  the  advance  of  this  scepticism,  which  would  doubtless 
have  next  assailed  portions  of  the  Iliad ;  and  he  succeeded. 
But  the  importance  of  the  controversy  is  proved  by  his  having 
written  a  special  treatise  against  the  Chorizontes,  in  which  he 
sought  to  prove  the  common  authorship  of  the  two  poems. 
It  is  very  creditable  to  his  sagacity  that  he  endeavoured  to 
prove  it  by  the  only  argument  which  could  become  conclusive 
— by  showing  anticipations  of  the  Odyssey  implied  in  the  Iliad. 
All  other  harmonies  can  be  explained  as  the  result  of  conscious 
agreement  on  the  part  of  the  later  poet  A  large  body  of  unde- 
signed anticipations  in  the  older  poem  might  indeed  convince  us. 
But  Aristarchus'  book  is  lost,  and  his  modern  followers  have  not 
attempted  to  sustain  his  position  with  reasonable  evidence. 
Until,  therefore,  some  new  evidence  is  produced,  which  is  well- 
nigh  impossible,  there  seems  no  reason  whatever  for  assuming 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  to  be  the  product  of  a  single  mind. 

§  56.  Having  thus  disposed  of  the  arguments  in  favoui  of 
this  larger  unity,  we  must  approach  the  exaggerated  attempts  to 
show  that  each  of  the  poems  as  a  whole,  with  the  exception  of 
a  stray  line  here  and  there,  and  perhaps  the  end  of  the  Odys- 
sey, is  the  work  of  a  single  poet  developing  a  logical  plot. 
Here  the  advocates  of  unity  have  really  the  verdict  of  antiquity 
to  some  extent  with  them,  for  although  the  Dolonda  (K)  in  the 
Iliad  and  the  last  book  were  much  suspected,  the  sceptics  of 
those  days  did  not  venture  on  the  hypothesis  of  the  absorption 
of  lesser  poems  in  the  texture  of  the  whole,  and  Aristarchus 
believed  that  all  the  difficulties  could  be  removed  by  obelising 
inconsistent  lines  or  sentences. 

But  here,  again,  I  protest  in  limine  against  the  evidence  of 
the  Greek  public,  or  of  any  other  public,  being  called  in  to  settle 
a  question  of  which  no  public  can  be  a  competent  judge.  What 


CH.V.  ARGUMENTS  FOR  SINGLE  AUTHORSHIP.       69 

higher  authority  upon  poetry,  say  our  opponents,  can  you  have 
than  the  consent  of  ages  ?  What  more  infallible  verdict  than 
that  of  successive  nations  and  centuries  ?  All  these  have  felt  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  to  be  unities,  and  shall  not  this  evidence  out- 
weigh the  doubts  of  critics  and  the  subtleties  of  grammarians  ? 
All  this  plausible  talk  is  founded  upon  a  capital  ignoratio  elenchi. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  public  is  the  ultimate  and  best 
judge  of  literature  in  one  sense — that  of  its  excellence — and  that 
there  is  no  instance  of  a  bad  work  surviving  for  ages  in  public 
esteem.  But  surely  it  is  absurd  to  set  up  the  public  as  a  judge 
of  the  unity  of  a  plot,  or  the  exact  composition  of  an  intricate 
system.  On  the  contrary,  uncritical  readers  are  quite  certain 
to  imagine  unity  and  consistency  in  any  work  handed  down 
to  them  as  one,  however  incongruous  or  contradictory  its 
details.  Thus  the  Psalms  of  David  strike  the  average  reader  as 
the  effusions  of  a  single  bard,  in  spite  of  headings  asserting  the 
contrary.  Thus  too  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  would  pass 
for  the  work  of  a  single  school,  if  not  of  a  single  pen,  though 
there  are  plain  traces  of  compromise  between  parties  all  through 
it.  And  so  with  a  thousand  other  instances.  The  public, 
then,  is  no  judge  whatever  of  the  unity  of  a  poem,  though  an 
excellent  judge  of  poetic  merit. 

§  57.  Let  us  now  examine  the  alleged  unity  of  the  Iliad 
more  in  detail.  The  arguments  advanced  by  such  men  as 
Colonel  Mure  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  both  expert  controversialists, 
are  of  this  kind — general  uniformity  of  diction,  general  and 
even  minute  consistency  in  the  characters,  general  sameness  of 
style.  They  urge  that  when  the  poem  is  handed  down  by 
tradition  as  a  single  whole,  these  additional  marks  of  design 
and  unity  are  conclusive  against  attributing  it  to  various  poets. 
What  they  say,  even  though  greatly  exaggerated,  has  much 
weight  against  the  advocates  of  an  aggregation  of  shorter  poems 
by  a  subsequent  arranger,  but  has  no  force  against  the  advocates 
of  an  original  Iliad  of  moderate  dimensions  dilated  by  successive 
additions  or  interpolations.  For  in  this  case  the  enlargers  or 
interpolators  would  take  what  care  they  could  to  observe  har- 
monies of  character  and  diction,  and  would  do  so  sufficiently  to 
satisfy  the  vulgar,  though  unable  to  deceive  accurate  criticism. 


70  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.V. 

This  is  in  fact  exactly  the  case.  The  unity  which  strikes  every- 
one at  first  reading  gradually  breaks  up  when  we  are  brought  to 
reflect  upon  the  logical  coherence  of  the  parts. 

I  am  very  far  indeed  from  asserting  the  absurd  principle 
laid  down  as  obvious  by  the  Germans,  that  wherever  there  is  a 
plain  violation  of  logical  consistency,  we  have  not  the  work  of  a 
,  single  poet  telling  his  own  story.  The  history  of  modern  lite- 
rature, even  in  a  critical  age,  shows  ample  instances  of  direct 
contradictions  in  the  undoubted  works  of  the  greatest  authors. 
But  all  these  cases,  so  far  as  I  know,  arise  from  forgetfulness 
of  details,  and  cannot  be  adduced  to  excuse  such  large  impro- 
babilities as  we  encounter  through  the  Iliad.  Yet,  even  in 
detail,  I  know  not  whether  any  parallel  could  be  found  (among 
great  writers)  to  the  narrative  from  II  313  to  0  252,  during 
which  at  least  two  days  and  nights  elapse,  and  a  series  of  incon- 
sistent events—- among  others  the  building  of  a  great  fortifica- 
tion with  gates — are  crowded  together,  while  the  dead  are  being 
buried.  Both  Hermann  and  Lachmann l  have  brought  out  the 
details.  Thus  the  fact  that  the  same  heroes  are  killed  two  or 
three  times  over  may  pass  as  unimportant,  but  how  shall  we 
defend  the  utter  confusion  of  motives  in  the  second  book,  the 
first  view  of  the  Greek  chiefs  by  Priam  from  the  wall  in  the 
tenth  year  of  the  war,  the  fear  of  Diomede  to  meet  some  god  in 
the  form  of  Glaucus,  when  on  the  same  day  and  in  the  same 
battle  he  has  by  divine  instigation  attacked  and  wounded  both 
Ares  and  Aphrodite  ?  How  shall  we  defend  the  complete  for- 
getfulness through  all  the  rest  of  the  poem  of  two  great  scenes 
— the  single  combat  of  Hector  and  Ajax,  and  the  capture  of  the 
horses  of  Rhesus  by  Diomede  ?  In  the  perpetual  encounters  be- 
tween Hector  and  Ajax  all  through  the  battle  at  the  ships,  Ajax 
never  once  alludes  to  his  success  in  the  single  combat,  though 
it  was  the  common  habit  of  Homer's  heroes  to  boast  of  such 
things.  In  the  races  of  the  twenty-third  book,  Diomede  con- 
tends with  the  horses  he  took  from  ^Eneas  in  the  fifth  book, 
and  no  mention  is  made  of  the  much  finer  horses  which  he 
carried  off  in  the  tenth.  Some  allusion  to  them  here  was  not 
only  natural,  but  necessary,  if  a  single  poet  had  been  thinking 
1  Betrachtungen  zttr  Ilias,  p.  24. 


CH.  v.  HOMERS  RELATION  TO  PREVIOUS  POETS.   ^\ 

out  his  story.  More  generally,  the  promise  of  Zeus  that  by 
the  retirement  and  wrath  of  Achilles  defeat  and  ruin  shall  come 
upon  the  Greeks,  is  followed  in  the  Iliad  by  a  series  of  brilliant 
victories  on  the  part  of  the  Greeks  ;  and  we  are  well-nigh  tired 
of  the  slaughter  of  the  Trojans,  before  the  least  ray  of  success 
dawns  upon  them.  This  is  not  the  work  of  a  single  poet  carry- 
ing out  a  definite  plan,  but  the  work  of  later  hands  enlarging, 
and  even  contradicting,  the  original  intentions  of  the  author. 

§  58.  But  what  was  this  plan,  and  what  the  work  of  the  origi- 
nal author  ?  I  will  endeavour  briefly  to  sketch  what  seems  to 
me  the  most  probable  theory,  though  it  is  obvious  that  no  con- 
structive criticism  can  be  so  safe  or  convincing  as  the  mere 
exposure  of  flaws  and  defects. 

It  has  already  been  shown  that  allusion  is  made  by  the 
authors  to  many  earlier  lays  as  in  existence,  and  even  as  pre- 
supposed by  the  Iliad.  There  are  endless  details  about  the 
earlier  history  of  the  heroes,  about  their  genealogies,  and  about 
the  adventures  of  the  gods,  which  are  referred  to  as  well  known 
and  current.  It  is  almost  certain  that  there  were  some  lays  on 
the  actual  subjects  of  the  Iliad  which  were  adopted  or  worked 
in  by  the  poet.  Every  early  poet  makes  free  use  of  earlier 
materials,  nor  is  there  in  the  history  of  primitive  literature  any 
instance  where  the  first  great  advance  was  not  based  on  previous 
work.  The  attempt  to  discover  and  to  sever  out  these  primi- 
tive elements  of  the  Iliad  has  been  prosecuted  by  the  Germans 
long  and  laboriously  enough  to  show  its  utter  futility.  No  two 
of  the  dissenters  can  agree,  and  if  they  did,  they  would  fail  to 
convince  any  candid  critic  that  their  results  were  more  than 
guesswork.  But  they  have  undoubtedly  shown  many  sutures 
and  joining  lines,  so  that,  while  failing  in  detail,  they  may  fairly 
be  said  to  have  established  their  principle. 

But  all  these  debts  of  Homer  to  earlier  lays  are  held  to 
be  debts  of  detail,  and  it  is  asserted,  with  good  reason,  that 
the  new  feature  in  the  Iliad,  and  a  principal  cause  of  its  suc- 
cess, was  its  splendid  plan.  Instead  of  singing  the  mere 
prowess  of  special  heroes,  or  chronicling  the  events  of  a  war, 
the  great  poet  who  struck  out  the  Iliad  devised  a  tragic  plot, 
into  which  he  could  weave  character  and  incident,  thus  actually 


72  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  V. 

anticipating,  as  Aristotle  clearly  saw,  the  glories  of  ^Eschylus 
and  his  successors.  The  wrath  of  Achilles  equalises  the  forces 
on  either  side,  so  that  the  characters  and  prowess  of  the  lesser 
heroes  appear  ;  the  friendship  of  Palroclus,  his  death  and  the 
fury  of  Achilles,  the  death  of  Hector — all  these  events  are 
brought  out  under  one  idea — the  wrath  of  Achilles. 

§  59.  While  agreeing  with  this  view,  and  convinced  as  I  am 
that  this  working  in  of  details  under  a  plot  was  the  secret  of  th^ 
Iliad's  greatness,  I  must  insist  upon  two  reservations :  first, 
the  plot  was  not  absolutely  original ;  secondly,  it  was  unusually 
capable  of  extension. 

It  has  not  been  remarked  by  any  of  the  critics,  that  among 
the  earlier  lays  mentioned  in  the  Iliad,  there  is  one  which  is  of 
a  far  larger  and  more  epic  character  than  the  rest — I  mean  that 
briefly  told  by  Phoenix  in  the  ninth  book  concerning  the  Life 
and  Death  of  Meleager.  There  are  here  the  materials  for  a 
splendid  epic — the  anger  of  Artemis,  the  ravages  of  the  wild 
boar,  his  pursuit  and  death,  the  quarrel  about  his  spoils,  the 
consequent  war  of  Curetes  and  ^Etolians,  the  mother's  curse  on 
Meleager,  his  sullen  refusal  to  help  his  country,  the  supplica- 
tions of  all  his  kindred,  the  storming  of  his  city,  his  wife's 
prayers,  his  sudden  reappearance  and  victory,  his  untimely 
death— all  this  (except  the  end)  is  told  by  Phoenix  with  a  direct 
application  to  the  wrath  and  sullen  inaction  of  Achilles. 
Though  this  part  of  the  ninth  book  probably  did  not  belong 
to  the  original  poem,  it  seems  so  early  an  addition,  that  its 
evidence  as  to  the  diffusion  of  the  Legend  of  Meleager  is  to  be 
trusted,  and  that  the  wrath  and  refusal  of  Meleager  to  help  his 
country  may  have  been  the  spark  which  kindled  in  the  mind  of 
Homer  the  plot  of  the  Achttleis.  There  are  ample  differences 
and  ample  originalities  in  the  Iliad  to  remove  all  pretence  for 
asserting  any  plagiarism.  I  merely  mean  to  say  that  if  the  short 
epic  about  Meleager  was,  as  it  seems  to  be,  older  than  the 
Iliad,  its  leading  idea  is  reproduced  in  the  later  poem. 

§  60.  We  come  to  the  second  and  more  important  feature 
above  mentioned,  the  elastic  nature  of  the  plot.  When  the  wrath 
of  Achilles  withdrew  him  from  the  field,  and  the  Greeks  began 
the  struggle  without  him,  it  was  quite  natural  that  other  heroes 


CH.v.  EXPANSIONS   OF  THE  ILIAD.  73 

should  endeavour  to  supply  his  place,  and  to  avert  the  defeat 
which  ultimately  showed  him  to  be  necessary  to  his  country- 
men. But  though  the  original  poet  may  have  designed  and 
carried  out  some  such  extension,  especially  where  Patroclus 
comes  out  to  fight,  still  the  present  extensions  of  the  plot  are  so 
distinctly  at  variance  with  the  main  idea,  that  we  must  at  once 
admit  the  interpolation  of  considerable  portions  of  the  present 
text.  Thus  the  long  section  which  embraces  books  B-H  is 
plainly  foisted  in  by  successive  bards,  when  they  sang  the 
epic  among  Greeks  who  felt  a  national  jealousy  for  the  prowess 
of  their  ancestors,  and  who  would  not  tolerate  their  defeat 
without  inflicting  greater  loss  upon  the  Trojans.  This  is  really 
carried  to  an  absurd  length.  The  Greeks  without  Achilles  are 
far  more  than  a  match  for  the  Trojans.  For  every  Greek  that  is 
slain  at  least  two  Trojans  fall,  and  so  we  are  brought  to  feel 
that  these  books  were  composed  by  poets  actually  contradicting 
the  idea  of  the  great  tragic  master  who  framed  the  plot. 

It  is  likewise  remarkable  that  these  portions  of  the  Iliad 
refer  to  events  which  are  misplaced  in  the  tenth  year  of  the 
war,  but  highly  suitable  at  its  commencement.  Such  are  the 
Catalogue,  the  viewing  of  the  Greek  heroes  by  Priam  and 
Helen,  the  single  combats  of  Paris  and  of  Hector  with  Mene- 
laus  and  Ajax.  All  these  matters,  as  Grote  clearly  saw,  belong 
to  an  Iliad,  but  not  to  an  Achilleis,  and  an  Achilleis  the  origi- 
nal poem  must  have  been  most  indubitably.  When  Mure  says, 
in  support  of  the  unity  of  the  poem,  that  it  is  inconceivable  how 
all  the  greatest  poets  of  separate  lays  should  have  confined 
themselves  to  the  events  of  a  few  days  in  the  tenth  year  of  the 
war,  he  simply  assumes  an  absurdity,  and  argues  from  it  as  a 
fact.  The  events  just  mentioned,  and  the  aristeice  of  most  of 
the  heroes,  will  suit  any  earlier  period  in  the  war,  and  even 
needed  a  little  adjustment,  a  few  omissions  and  additions,  to 
make  them  fit  their  place  as  indifferently  as  they  now  do. 

The  second,  third,  and  seventh  books  were  perhaps  adopted 
from  an  earlier  Iliad  for  mere  expansion's  sake,  or  to  transfer  to 
a  nobler  place  poetry  which  was  being  lost  by  the  growing 
splendour  of  newer  Iliad.  The  aristeia  of  Diomede  is  probably 
due  to  the  recitation  of  the  Iliad  at  Argos,  where  the  poem  was 

VOL.  i. — 4 


74  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.        CH.  v. 

very  popular,  and  where  the  national  hero  must  be  made  to  play 
a  prominent  part.  Thus  a  kingdom  is  made  for  him  in  the 
Catalogue,  which  is  simply  cut  out  of  the  empire  of  Agamem- 
non, and  is  plainly  inconsistent  with  it,  and  the  hero  himself  is 
drawn  quite  as  fearless  and  as  invincible  as  Achilles.  But  in 
the  later  books  (except  the  twenty-third)  he  almost  completely 
disappears. 

The  arming  and  acts  of  Agamemnon,  in  the  eleventh  book, 
appear  to  me  another  such  interpolation,  probably  for  the  pur- 
pose of  recitation  at  Mycenae,  for  in  the  original  plot  the  King 
of  Men  seems  to  be  a  weak,  chicken-hearted  creature,  always 
counselling  flight,  or  finding  fault  with  his  inferiors,  and  not 
the  almost  superhuman  being  he  is  here  represented.  In  the 
same  way  I  cannot  believe  that  the  acts  of  Patroclus  are  in  the 
least  consistent  with  his  character  and  reputation  all  through 
the  real  Achilleis.  He  is  nowhere  spoken  of  as  a  wonderful 
hero,  inferior  only  to  Achilles  in  valour,  but  as  an  amiable 
second-rate  personage,  who  keeps  on  good  terms  with  everyone, 
and  who  obtains  leave  to  bring  out  the  Myrmidons  to  battle. 
I  believe  that  in  the  original  Achilleis  he  made  but  a  poor 
diversion,  and  was  presently  slain  in  fair  fight  at  the  ships  by 
the  great  Hector,  as  indeed  the  later  books  distinctly  imply. 
But  the  subsequent  poets  who  recited  in  the  interests  of  Greek 
vanity  made  him  slaughter  Trojans  all  day,  and  at  last  robbed 
Hector  of  his  glory  by  introducing  Apollo  and  Euphorbus  to 
help  him. 

§  6 1.  This  brings  me  to  the  strongest  and  clearest  incon- 
sistency in  the  whole  of  our  present  Iliad — the  character  and 
position  of  Hector.  It  has  been  common  among  the  English 
conservatives  to  boast  of  the  wonderful  harmony  and  accuracy 
of  each  character  in  the  Iliad,  and  they  quietly  assume  the 
whole  of  their  facts  as  incontrovertible.  But  surely  we  need 
not  trouble  ourselves  about  their  arguments,  if  we  can  deny  and 
disprove  their  preliminary  facts.  That  there  are  many  subtle 
and  striking  harmonies  I  will  not  deny,  but  will  assert  what 
has  hardly  been  yet  touched  upon  in  this  country,  that  there 
are  abundant  and  striking  inconsistencies  also.  I  have  alluded 
to  some  of  these— the  fear  of  Diomede  on  meeting  Glaucus, 


CH.V.  THE  ORIGINAL  HECTOR.  75 

the  various  pictures  of  Agamemnon,  the  sudden  splendour  of 
Patroclus  ;  but  all  these  are  nothing  when  we  come  to  the  case 
of  Hector. 

Critics,  old  and  new,  have  felt  the  remarkable  contradic- 
tions in  the  drawing  of  this  famous  hero,  and  yet  none  of  them 
have  ventured  to  suggest  the  real  explanation.  Even  Mure 
and  Mr.  Gladstone  confess  that  in  our  Iliad  he  is  wholly 
inferior  to  his  reputation ;  'he  is  paid  off,'  say  they,  '  with 
generalities,  while  in  actual  encounter  he  is  hardly  equal  to 
the  second-rate  Greek  heroes.'  l  Yet  why  is  he  so  important 
all  through  the  plot  of  the  poem  ?  Why  is  his  death  by 
Achilles  made  an  achievement  of  the  highest  order  ?  Why  are 
the  chiefs  who  at  one  time  challenge  and  worst  him  at  another 
quaking  with  fear  at  his  approach?  Simply  because  in  the 
original  plan  of  the  Iliad  he  was  a  great  warrior,  and  because 
these  perpetual  defeats  by  Diom.ede  and  Ajax,  this  avoidance 
of  Agamemnon,  this  swaggering  and  '  hectoring '  which  we  now 
find  in  him,  were  introduced  by  the  enlargers  and  interpolators, 
in  order  to  enhance  the  merits  of  their  favourites  at  his  expense. 

It  seems  to  me  certain  that  originally  the  Hector  of  the 
Iliad  was  really  superior  to  all  the  Greeks  except  Achilles,  that 
upon  the  retirement  of  the  latter  he  made  shorter  work  of 
them  than  the  later  rhapsodists  liked  to  admit,  that  he  soon 
burst  the  gates  and  appeared  at  the  ships,  that  Patroclus  was 
slain  there  after  a  brief  diversion,  and  that  in  this  way  the  whole 
catastrophe  was  very  much  more  precipitated  than  we  now  find 
it.  I  suppose  that  even  when  Achilles  returns  to  the  field, 
these  interpolations  continue,  that  the  battle  of  the  gods  comes 
from  quite  a  different  sort  of  poetry  than  the  worldly  epic,  and 
that  possibly  the  book  of  the  games,  and  the  last  book,  were 
added  to  the  shorter  plot.  But  it  is  likely  that  these  additions 
must  have  been  made  very  early,  and  by  very  splendid  poets, 
for  I  cannot  think  with  the  Germans  that  such  poetry  as 
the  ninth  and  twenty-fourth  books  of  the  Iliad  is  one  whit 

1  I  should  not  fail  to  add  that  Mr.  Gladstone  finds  no  difficulty  in  re- 
conciling all  these  inconsistencies,  and  even  attacks  the  dissectors  of  the 
hero,  in  an  article  entitled  The  Slicing  of  Hector  {Nineteenth  Century  for 
Oct.  1878). 


76  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  v, 

inferior  to  the  best  parts  of  the  original  poem.  It  also  appears 
to  me  that  the  interpolators  must  have  handled  both  the  original 
poem  and  thair  additions  or  adaptations  very  freely ;  for  if  my 
view  of  Hector  be  correct,  they  must  have  taken  out  achieve-  ( 
ments  of  his,  and  put  in  those  of  Greek  heroes  instead,  at  the 
same  time  adapting  stories  from  the  earlier  history  of  the  war 
to  suit  ti.-e  altered  time  and  circumstances. 

§  62.  No  doubt  the  strongest  objection  to  this  theory  of 
the  formation  of  our  Iliad  in  most  people's  minds  will  be,  not  the 
groundless  assertion  about  so  many  great  poets  having  confined 
themselves  to  so  short  a  period  of  the  war,  which  I  have  set 
aside,  but  rather  the  assumption  of  the  mere  existence  of  more 
than  one  poet  of  such  eminence,  not  to  say  of  several,  or  even 
of  a  school  of  such  splendour.  I  think  this  argument,  which  at 
first  sight  appears  strong,  depends  upon  a  want  of  appreciation 
of  the  varying  state  of  society,  and  its  effects  upon  litera- 
ture. There  are  ages,  sometimes  primitive,  sometimes  simple, 
where  a  school  or  habit  of  thinking  will  produce  from  a  -number 
of  men  what  another  age  will  only  attain  in  high  individual 
exceptions. 

Here  are  two  well-known  instances.  It  is  impossible  for 
all  our  divines  in  the  present  day  to  produce  prayers  written 
in  the  pious  English  of  our  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  There 
is  a  certain  depth  of  style,  a  certain  '  sweet-smelling  savour ' 
about  it  which  is  almost  unique  in  our  language,  and  now 
unapproachable.  But  this  book  is  not  the  work  of  a  single 
man,  or  even  perhaps  of  a  few,  but  of  a  considerable  number, 
who  have  nevertheless  attained  such  unity  or  harmony  in  their 
way  of  thinking  and  of  translating  (from  the  Latin),  that  it  is 
not  easy  to  find  the  least  inequality  or  falling  off  in  any  part 
These  men  were  not  all  Shakespeares  and  Miltons,  but  they 
were  men  who  belonged  to  a  school  greater  than  any  individual 
can  ever  be. 

Let  us  consider  another  case  not  very  dissimilar.  The  age 
of  the  Reformation  produced  in  Germany  an  outburst  of  devo- 
tional poetry,  which  is  preserved  in  the  countless  collections 
of  old  hymns  still  sung  in  the  Protestant  churches.  Many 
of  these  hymns  are  assigned  to  well-known  and  celebrated 


CH.  v.       REAL  GREATNESS  OF  THE  ILIAD.  77 

authors,  such  as  Martin  Luther,  some  to  men  otherwise  un- 
known, others  again  are  anonymous.  But  in  literary  merit 
there  is  a  curious  evenness  about  them.  They  do  not  differ  in 
any  way  as  the  poetry  of  great  and  little  poets  does  in  our  day. 
The  same  lofty  tone,  the  same  simple  faith,  the  same  pure  lan- 
guage pervades  them  almost  all.  And  yet  both  these  examples 
are  from  ages  very  literary  and  developed  as  compared  to  the 
age  of  the  epic  bards  in  Greece.  I  conceive,  therefore,  that  this 
evenness  of  production,  this  prevalence  of  a  dominating  tone, 
has  made  it  possible  for  the  work  of  several  hands  to  coalesce 
into  a  great  unity,  in  which  the  parts  are  all  great,  and,  in  the 
opinion  of  many,  all  worthy  of  the  whole. 

§  63.  But  the  destructive  critics  would  not  have  recourse  to 
this  argument,  because  they  deny  the  fact  which  I  have  assumed. 
Many  Germans  find  parts  of  the  Iliad  wholly  unworthy  of  the 
rest ;  they  will  even  tell  you  the  line  where  a  worse  poet  began, 
and  where  the  greater  poet  takes  up  the  thread  again.  This 
criticism  is  so  completely  subjective,  so  completely  dependent 
upon  the  varying  taste  and  judgment  of  the  critic,  that  I  for- 
bear to  enter  upon  it.  Many  passages  which  they  think  un- 
worthy seem  to  me  the  finest  poetry  ;  and  if  I  were  to  select  a 
specimen  of  what  seems  to  me  an  evident  and  most  disturbing 
interpolation,  I  should  choose  the  lines  £i  527-52,  which  dilute 
a  splendid  scene,  but  which  are  nevertheless  accepted  as  belong- 
ing to  their  present  place  by  Aristarchus,  and  even  by  all  the 
destructive  critics  of  late  days. 

§  64.  The  theory  which  I  advocate  has  many  points  of 
resemblance  with  that  of  Grote.  But  I  do  not  think  all  the 
books  which  disturb  the  Achilleis  belong  to  one  other  poem, 
or  mas,  as  he  does.  I  think  they  were  separate  lays,  perhaps 
composed,  perhaps  adapted,  for  their  place.  I  also  think  that 
the  part  of  Hector  in  the  tragedy  has  been  tampered  with  more 
seriously  than  he  suspected.  I  further  agree  with  Voltaire  and 
the  best  destructive  critics  in  Germany  in  thinking,  that  though 
the  Iliad  has  a  distinct  plot,  and  though  this  plot  was  the  direct 
cause  of  its  several  lays  attaining  to  their  present  fame  in  the 
world,  yet  the  pleasure  which  educated  men  now  take  in  the 
Iliad  is  not  in  its  plot,  but  in  its  details.  It  is  for  splendid 


78  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.V. 

scenes,  for  touching  episodes,  for  picturesque  similes,  that  w6 
love  the  Iliad  most,  and  not  for  its  economy  or  structure. 

The  successive  events  are  sometimes  so  loosely  connected 
that  we  come  to  suspect  the  commission  of  Peisistratus  of 
having  found  many  diverging  versions,  and  of  having  co-ordi- 
nated them,  in  preference  to  suppressing  them  all  save  one. 
This  is  more  particularly  the  case  with  the  similes,  with  which 
the  Iliad  abounds.  In  spite  of  the  ingenuity  and  the  reverence 
of  critics  in  defending  them,  these  similes  are  often  excessive 
and  disturbing  to  the  narrative,  they  often  repeat  the  same  facts 
with  hardly  any  variation,  and  when  we  find  two  or  three  co- 
ordinated without  adequate  reason,  it  seems  as  if  different  recit- 
ing rhapsodes  had  composed  them  separately,  and  then  the 
commission  included  them  all  in  their  comprehensive  edition.1 

§  65.  These  are  the  principal  reflections  which  suggest  them- 
selves upon  a  critical  survey  of  the  Iliad.  It  would  be  idle  in  this 
place  to  rehearse  again  the  centuries  of  praise  which  this  immor- 
tal poem  has  received  from  all  lovers  of  real  poetry.  While  the 
historian  and  the  grammarian  will  ever  find  there  subjects  of 
perplexity  and  doubt,  every  sound  nature,  from  the  schoolboy 
eager  for  life  to  the  old  man  weary  of  it,  will  turn  to  its  pages 
for  deep  human  portraits  of  excitement  and  of  danger,  of 
friendship  and  of  sympathy.  So  purely  and  perfectly  did  the 
poet  of  that  day  mirror  life  and  character,  that  he  forgets  his 
own  existence,  and  leaves  no  trace  of  himself  upon  the  canvas 
which  he  fills  with  heroes  and  their  deeds.  He  paints  what  he 
conceives  an  ideal  age,  older  and  better  than  his  own,  but  paints 
too  naturally  not  to  copy  from  real  life  enough  to  let  us  look 
through  the  ideal  to  the  real  beneath.  The  society  thus  revealed 
I  have  already  elsewhere  described.2 

§  66.  We  turn  to  consider  the  Odyssey.  Though  there  was 
controversy  in  old  days  about  the  priority  of  the  Iliad,  it  seems 
quite  settled  now3  that  we  must  look  upon  the  Odyssey  as  a  later 
poem — how  much  later  it  is  impossible  to  say.  The  limits 
assigned  have  varied  from  those  who  believed  it  the  work  of 

1  Cf.  especially  B  55-83.  2  Social  Life  in  Greece,  chaps,  i.  and  ii. 

3  Schomann  alone  suggests  (Jahris  Jahrb.  vol.  Ixix.  p.  130)  that  the 
Odyssey  may  have  been  the  model  for  the  framers  of  the  Iliad. 


CH.  v.   CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE   ODYSSEY.          79 

the  same  author  in  old  age,  to  those  who  place  it  two  centuries 
later  (as  M.  E.  Burnouf  does),  owing  to  the  difference  of  its 
plan  and  style.  But,  as  Bonitz  says,1  if  not  composed  in  the 
old  age  of  Homer,  it  was  composed  in  the  old  age  of  Greek 
epic  poetry,  when  the  creative  power  was  diminishing,  but  that 
of  ordering  and  arranging  had  become  more  developed.  The 
plot  of  the  Odyssey  is  skilfully  conceived,  and  on  the  whole 
artistically  carried  out,  even  though  modern  acuteness  has  found 
flaws  in  its  sutures.  But  critics  seem  agreed  th^t  the  ele- 
ments of  the  Odyssey  were  not  short  and  disconnected  lays, 
but  themselves  epics  of  considerable  length,  one  on  the  Return 
of  Odysseus,  another  on  the  adventures  of  Telemachus,  and 
these  the  chief. 

The  drawing  of  the  characters  is  perhaps  less  striking,  but 
more  consistent  than  in  the  Iliad.  The  whole  composition 
is  in  fact  tamer  and  more  modern.  The  first  faint  pulse  of 
public  opinion  apart  from  the  ruling  chiefs  is  beginning  to  be 
felt ;  the  various  elements  of  society  are  beginning  to  crystal- 
lise. The  profession  of  poet,  which  was  either  unknowiAor 
does  not  chance  to  be  mentioned  in  the  Iliad,  is  made  as 
one  of  importance,  which  the  author  strives  consciously  to 
magnify.  Instead  of  constant  battles,  and  perpetual  descrip- 
tions of  blood  and  wounds,  we  find  that  mercantile  enterprise 
and  the  adventure  of  discovery  are  awakening  in  the  Greek 
mind.  Luxury  seems  increased  ;  and  the  esteem  for  chivalry 
retires  before  the  esteem  for  prudence  and  discretion.  The 
gods,  who  still  act,  and  perpetually  interfere  in  the  life  of  men, 
are  beginning  to  act  upon  more  definite  principles,  and  with 
somewhat  less  caprice  and  passion.  The  similes,  with  which 
the  Iliad  abounds,  and  which  even  there  are  less  frequent  in 
the  later  books,  become  almost  exceptional. 

§  67.  It  has  been  said,  with  a  good  deal  of  force,  by  the  advo- 
cates of  the  unity  of  the  two  poems,  that  all  these  differences  may 
be  accounted  for  by  the  difference  of  the  subjects;  that  in  a  poem 
of  travel  and  adventure  we  must  expect  these  very  variations. 
But  even  granting  this,  the  choice  of  the  subject  seems 
rather  the  consequence  than  the  cause  of  the  altered  feelings 
1  Der  Ursprung  der  Homerischen  Gedichte,  4th  ed.  p.  39. 


80  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  v. 

and  customs.  With  the  blood  and  wounds,  and  the  rude  camp 
life  of  the  Iliad  before  him,  the  poet  who  ventured  upon  a  com- 
petition with  so  great  a  forerunner  deliberately  set  himself  to 
find  contrasts,  not  only  in  treatment,  but  in  plan.  He  may 
fairly  claim  to  have  surpassed  the  Iliad  in  the  latter  feature  ; 
and  even  in  the  former,  there  is  more  charm  about  the  Odyssey 
to  a  calmer  and  more  reflective  age,  than  about  the  fiercer 
Iliad.  The  Greeks  of  historical  times,  who  were  always  trying 
to  stimulate  in  their  citizens  military  valour — a  quality  in  which 
most  Greeks  were  deficient  enough — taught  their  children  the 
warlike  poem  with  this  intent,  and  praised  it  above  all  others 
for  this  reason.  Their  approval  was  taken  up  by  the  gram- 
marians, and  handed  on  to  modern  critics  ;  but  it  seems  to 
me  doubtful  whether  it  is  not  founded  wholly  upon  the  educa- 
tional feeling  among  the  Greeks.  Unbiassed  critics  will  now- 
a-days  read  the  Odyssey  oftener,  and  with  greater  pleasure. 
Most  of  the  Germans  think  that  there  is  a  marked  falling 
off  in  the  second  half  of  the  poem  ;  that  the  character  of  the 
hero  becomes  exaggerated,  and  the  narrative  generally  confused 
and  injured  by  repetitions  of  the  same  idea.  It  would  not  be 
difficult  to  defend  many  of  the  points  they  have  attacked,  and 
to  maintain  that  the  trials  of  the  unrecognised  Odysseus  in  his 
own  palace  among  the  dissolute  suitors  are  most  artistically 
varied  and  prolonged  in  order  to  stir  the  reader  with  im- 
patience for  the  thrilling  catastrophe.  It  is  generally  agreed 
that  there  are  spurious  additions  at  the  end.  Again,  Kirchhoff 
has  argued  that  the  double  reproof  of  Penelope's  incredulity  by 
Telemachus  and  by  Odysseus  is  not  consistent,  and  shows  signs 
of  patching.  Again— and  this  is  no  matter  of  detail— it  is  clear 
that  there  are  in  the  poem  two  distinct  reasons  to  account  for 
the  non-recognition  of  Odysseus  on  his  return  home  :  first,  the 
natural  changes  of  twenty  years'  toil  and  hardship  ;  secondly, 
the  miraculous  transformation  effected  by  Athene  for  the  pur- 
pose of  disguise. 

These  and  other  similar  objections  to  the  original  unity  of 
the  Odyssey  are  not  likely  to  occur  to  the  general  reader,  or  to 
disturb  him,  seeing  that  they  had  never  occurred  to  the  acutest 
critics  before  Kirchhoff.  Thus  Sengebusch,  whose  writings 


CH  v.         RESULT  OF  THE  CONTROVERSY.  81 

(so  far  as  they  are  known  to  me)  date  prior  to  KirchhofFs 
book,  is  very  severe  on  the  Chorizontes,  and  ridicules  all  their 
attempts  to  prove  the  Odyssey  younger  than  the  Iliad,  or  made 
up  of  parts  various  in  age.  His  arguments,  however,  though 
very  strong  against  the  minor  points  urged,  do  not  touch 
the  later  and  more  serious  attack.1  Professor  Geddes  is  con- 
tent, with  Wolf  and  Grote,  to  assume  the  unity  of  the  Odyssey 
as  unquestioned,  and  the  whole  of  his  Homeric  theory  is 
based  upon  this  assumption.  These  critics  have  the  authority 
of  Aristarchus.  But  his  assumption  of  the  unity  of  the  Iliad 
must  have  vitiated  his  great  argument  about  its  anticipations 
of  the  Odyssey.  If  several  hands  contributed  to  each  poem, 
it  was  certain  that  some  of  the  later  Ilian  poets  knew  the 
Odyssey,  at  least  in  part ;  nay,  it  is  very  likely  that  the  same 
poets  contributed  to  both,  as  has  been  shown  by  the  researches 
of  Professor  Geddes.  Hence,  harmonies  of  this  kind  between 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  would  only  prove  a  gradual  construction 
of  both  in  a  school  with  fixed  traditions  and  intent  on  avoid- 
ing manifest  contradictions. 

§  68.  It  may  be  fairly  expected  that  I  should  not  conclude 
the  subject  without  giving  a  brief  summary  of  the  general  re- 
sults attained  by  this  long  controversy. 

We  may  assume  it  as  certain  that  there  existed  in  Ionia 
schools  or  fraternities  of  epic  rhapsodists  who  composed  and 
recited  heroic  lays  at  feasts,  and  often  had  friendly  contests  in 
these  recitations.  The  origin  of  these  recitations  may  be  sought 
in  northern  Greece,  from  which  the  fashion  migrated  in  early 
days  to  Asia  Minor.  We  may  assume  that  these  singers  became 
popular  in  many  parts  of  Greece,  and  that  they  wandered  from 

1  His  most  ingenious  point  is  his  escape  from  the  difficulty  about  the 
Kimmerians,  whose  mention  in  A.  14  is  held  to  prove  that  that  passage  was 
composed  after  the  appearance  of  the  nation  in  Asia  Minor,  circ.  700  B.C. 
Sengebusch  shows  that  there  were  Xei^epfoi  in  Epirus  ;  that  Aristarchus 
probably  on  this  account  rejected  the  variant  Kep£e/>iW,  but  preserved  the 
Ionic  form  Kijujtf'pjot,  as  the  home  of  the  legend  came  from  that  country  ; 
finally,  that  this  very  passage  suggested  the  name  which  the  Ionian  Greeks 
gave  to  the  devastating  invaders  who  overran  Asia  Minor,  and  who  were 
not  really  so  called.  Cf.  yahrfs  Jahrbiicher,  vol.  Ixvii.  p.  414.  But  all 
this  seems  argutins  quam  venus. 

A* 


82  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CK.  v. 

court  to  court  glorifying  the  heroic  ancestors  of  the  various  chiefs. 
One  among  them,  called  Homer,  was  endowed  with  a  genius 
superior  to  the  rest,  and  struck  out  a  plot  capable  of  nobler  and 
larger  treatment.  It  is  likely  that  this  superiority  was  not 
recognised  at  the  time,  and  that  he  remained  all  his  life  a 
singer  like  the  rest,  a  wandering  minstrel,  possibly  poor  and 
blind.  The  listening  public  gradually  stamped  his  poem  with 
their  approval,  they  demanded  its  frequent  recitation,  and  so 
this  Homer  began  to  attain  a  great  posthumous  fame.  But 
when  this  fame  led  people  to  inquire  into  his  life  and  his- 
tory, it  had  already  passed  out  of  recollection,  and  men  sup- 
plied by  fables  what  they  had  forgotten  or  neglected.  The 
rhapsodists,  however,  then  turned  their  attention  to  expanding 
and  perfecting  his  poem,  which  was  greatly  enlarged  and  called 
the  Iliad.  In  doing  this  they  had  recourse  to  the  art  of  writ- 
ing, which  seems  to  have  been  in  use  when  Homer  framed  his 
poem,  but  which  was  certainly  employed  when  the  plan  was 
enlarged  with  episodes.  The  home  of  the  original  Homer 
seems  to  have  been  about  Smyrna,  and  in  contact  with  both 
JEolic  and  Ionic  legends.  His  date  is  quite  uncertain;  it  need 
not  be  placed  before  800  B.C.,  and  is  perhaps  later,  but  not 
after  700  B.C. 

When  the  greatness  of  the  Iliad  had  been  already  discovered, 
another  rhapsodist  of  genius  conceived  the  idea  of  constructing 
a  similar  but  contrasted  epic  from  the  stories  about  Odysseus 
and  Telemachus,  and  so  our  Odyssey  came  into  existence — a 
more  carefully  planned  story,  but  not  so  fresh  and  original  as 
the  older  Iliad.  Both  poets  lived  at  the  time  when  the  indi- 
vidual had  not  asserted  himself  superior  to  the  clan  or  brother- 
hood of  bards  to  which  he  belonged,  and  hence  their  personality 
is  lost  behind  the  general  features  of  the  school,  and  the 
legendary  character  of  their  subjects.  An  age  of  rapid  and 
original  production  is  not  unlikely  to  produce  this  result.  Thus 
Shakespeare,  among  a  crowd  of  playwrights,  and  without  any 
prestige,  did  not  become  famous  till  the  details  of  his  life  were 
well-nigh  forgotten.  The  controversies  concerning  his  plays 
have  many  points  of  analogy  to  the  disputes  about  Homer. 

When  the  name  of  Homer  became  famous,  all  epic  compo- 


CH.v.  CHARM  OF  THE  ODYSSEY.  83 

sitions  pretended  to  be  his  work,  and  he  gradually  became  the 
hero  eponymos  of  the  schools  of  rhapsodists.  Hence  the  first 
critics  began  by  disallowing  the  Homeric  origin  of  various  in- 
ferior and  later  compositions.  This  process  had  in  later  classical 
times  gone  so  far  as  to  reject  all  but  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 
With  an  attempt  to  reject  even  the  Odyssey,  ancient  scepticism 
paused.  No  Greek  critic  ever  thought  of  denying  that  each 
poem  was  the  conception  and  work  of  a  single  mind,  and  of  a 
mind  endowed  with  exceptional  genius.  The  attempt  of  the 
Wolfian  school  to  prove  them  mere  conglomerates  has  failed. 
They  have  proved  that  there  was  extensive  interpolation,  but 
all  attempts  to  disengage  the  original  nucleus  have  failed. 

§  69.  It  is  indeed  sad  that  the  historian  of  Greek  literature 
must  devote  all  his  attention  to  these  dry  discussions  when  he 
comes  to  treat  of  the  most  charming  among  Greek  books,  the 
oldest  and  the  most  perfect  romance  in  European  society.  All  the 
characters  of  the  Odyssey  live  before  us  with  the  most  wonderful 
clearness.  Even  the  old  servants,  and  the  dogs,  are  life-portraits; 
and  Plato  has  not  attained  to  a  more  delicate  shading  of  cha- 
racter than  may  be  found  in  the  drawing  of  the  various  ladies, 
or  of  the  insolent  suitors,  who  crowd  upon  the  scene.  When 
we  hear  that  Sophocles  took  whole  dramas  from  the  Odyssey, 
we  rather  wonder  that  Euripides  did  not  do  so  also  ;  nor  can 
we  allege  the  imaginary  reason  in  Aristotle's  Poetic,  that  the 
plot  was  too  simple  and  well-articulated  to  afford  more  than 
one  drama.  For  it  is  really  very  complex  and  ingenious.  The 
gradual  approach  of  the  catastrophe  after  Odysseus'  return  in 
disguise  is  wonderfully  exciting,  and  thrills  the  mind  at  the 
twentieth  perusal  as  at  the  first.  The  portrait  of  the  hero  is 
an  essentially  Greek  ideal,  with  the  ingrained  weaknesses  of 
the  Hellenic  character  fully  expressed  in  him,  yet,  on  the 
whole,  superior  to  the  fierce  and  obstinate  Achilles.  But  the 
outspoken  admission  of  guile  and  deceit  in  Odysseus  pro- 
•  duced  a  gradual  degradation  of  his  character  in  the  cyclic 
poets,  in  Epicharmus,  and  in  tragedy,  while  Achilles  escaped. 
In  fact,  educational  tendencies  censured  the  general  inclination 
to  knavery,  and  exalted  the  somewhat  deficient  quality  of 
physical  courage,  wherever  they  were  found  described  in  the 


84  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  v. 

Bible  of  the  Greeks.     Nevertheless,  Odysseus  was  the  Jacob  of 
the  nation,  the  real  type  and  patriarch  of  the  Ionic  race. 

I  will  conclude  by  pointing  out  a  peculiarly  poetical  trait  in 
the  character  of  Penelope,  which  seems  to  me  to  speak  a  long 
world-experience,  and  very  little  of  that  buoyant  simplicity  of 
early  times  and  primitive  manners  which  are  usually  lauded  in 
Homer.  Nothing  is  at  first  sight  stranger  than  the  obstinate 
scepticism  of  Penelope  at  the  end  of  the  story.  She  who  had 
for  years  sought  out  and  given  credence  to  every  strolling 
vagabond's  report  about  her  husband,  cannot  persuade  herself, 
when  he  actually  returns,  to  accept  him  !  And  yet,  nowhere  has 
any  modern  pcet  given  us  truer  and  deeper  psychology.  To  a 
nature  like  Penelope's,  the  longing  for  her  husband  had  be- 
come so  completely  the  occupation  of  her  life — '  grief  filled 
the  room  up  of  her  absent  lord' — had  so  satisfied  and  en- 
grossed her  thoughts  that,  on  his  return,  all  her  life  seemed 
empty,  all  her  occupation  gone,  and  she  was  in  that  blank 
amazement  which  paralyses  the  mind.  For  after  a  great  and 
sudden  loss,  we  know  not  how  to  prepare  ourselves  for  a 
change,  however  happy,  in  our  daily  state,  and  our  minds  at 
first  refuse  to  accept  the  loss  of  griefs  which  have  become 
almost  dear  to  us  from  their  familiarity.  Such  a  conception 
we  might  expect  from  Menander  or  from  Shakespeare.  In 
Homei  it  is  indeed  passing  strange. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   CYCLIC   POETS   AND   THE   BATRACHO-MYO-MACHIA. — 
.(ESOP   AND   BABRIUS. 

§  70.  IT  is  not  the  plan  of  this  book  to  notice  the  lost  works 
in  Greek  literature,  except  so  far  as  it  is  necessary  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  remaining  treasures.  Those  who  desire  to  see 
all  that  can  be  said  on  the  obscure  subject  of  the  cyclic  poets 
may  consult  Welcker's  Epischer  Cyclus,  where  the  greater 
part  of  three  volumes  is  devoted  to  the  discussion  of  notices 
and  fragments  in  themselves  of  little  value,  and  to  an  estimate 
of  the  genius  of  poets  whom  the  ancients  neglected  or  despised. 
The  few  facts  elicited  by  his  very  long  discussion  are  easily 
summed  up. 

It  is  a  salient  fact  in  Greek  literature  that  each  species  of 
composition  was  thoroughly  exhausted  when  the  next  in  order 
sprang  up.  Thus,  the  long  period  which  elapsed  from  the  first 
outburst  of  epic  poetry  to  the  rise  of  iambic  and  lyric  poetry, 
as  well  as  the  earlier  epochs  of  these  species,  was  filled  with  a 
series  of  epic  writers  who  treated  subjects  similar  to  those  of 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  But  we  are  told  that  no  later  poet 
whatever  covered  this  particular  ground,  owing,  it  is  said,  to 
the  great  excellence  of  the  real  Homer,  who  far  distanced  and 
silenced  all  competition.  It  would  be  safer  to  assert  that  all 
the  poets  who  did  sing  of  these  subjects  were  either  embodied 
in  the  Homeric  poems,  or,  if  not,  were  immediately  thrown 
aside  and  forgotten.  I  have  already  shown  (p.  73)  that  the  earlier 
lays  discernible  in  the  Iliad  were  by  no  means  confined  to  the 
tenth  year  of  the  war,  but  may  have  suited  any  period  subse- 
quent to  the  landing  or  before  the  death  of  Hector.  To  us, 


86  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  VI. 

however,  no  separate  poet  remains  who  is  known  to  have 
trodden  on  the  ground  of  Homer. 

It  was  once  commonly  believed  that  the  remaining  epic 
poets  equally  avoided  touching  upon  one  another,  that  they 
composed  their  poems  upon  a  fixed  chronological  plan,  each 
resuming  where  the  other  had  finished,  and  so  completing  an 
account  of  what  is  called  the  Epic  cycle,  from  the  birth  of 
Aphrodite  in  the  Cypria  down  to  the  conclusion  of  the  Nostoi,  or 
Telegonia,  of  Eugammon.  But  it  seems  clearly  made  out  now 
that  no  such  fixed  system  of  poems  existed  ;  that  the  authors, 
widely  separated  in  date  and  birthplace,  were  no  corporation 
with  fixed  traditions ;  that  they  did  overlap  in  subject,  and 
repeat  the  same  legends ;  and  that  the  epic  cycle  does  not 
mean  a  cycle  of  poems,  but  a  cycle  of  legends,  arranged  by  the 
grammarians,  who  illustrated  them  by  a  selection  of  poems, 
or  parts  of  poems,  including,  of  course,  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
and  then  such  other  epics  as  told  the  whole  story  of  the  Theban 
and  Trojan  wars,  down  to  the  conclusion  of  the  heroic  age. 

§  71.  We  owe  chiefly  to  the  summary  of  the  grammarian 
Proclus,1  which  is  preserved  to  us,  the  following  list  of  the 
poems  and  subjects,  (i)  The  Cypria,  in  early  days  attributed  to 
Homer  himself,  then  denied  to  him  by  Herodotus  (ii.  117)  and 
other  sound  critics  on  account  of  variations  from  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey  in  its  legends,  was  generally  cited  anonymously, 
as  in  the  Schol.  Ven.  on  the  Iliad.  Later  on,  Athenseus  and 
Proclus  speak  of  Stasinus,  or  Hegesias,  or  Hegesinus  as  the 
author.  It  was  called  Cypria,  either  because  the  author  of 
the  poem  came  from  Cyprus,  or  because  it  celebrated  the 
Cyprian  goddess  Aphrodite,  and  detailed  from  the  commence- 
ment her  action  in  the  Trojan  war.  This  fact  of  itself  shows  a 
standpoint  quite  foreign  to  the  Iliad.  The  poem  was,  how- 
ever, an  introduction  to  the  Iliad,  telling  a  vast  number  of 
myths,  and  leading  the  reader  from  the  first  causes  of  the  war 
up  to  the  tenth  year  of  its  duration.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  such  a 
vast  subject  loosely  connected  must  have  failed  to  afford  the 
artistic  unity  which  underlies  the  course  of  the  Iliad.  (2)  The 

1  Cf.  Bindorfs  Sckoi.  Grac.  in  Iliadem,  vol.  i.  (Pref.)  p.  xxxi,  sq. 


CH.  vr.  THE  CYCLIC  POETS.  87 

sEthiopis,  in  five  books,  by  Arctinus  of  Miletus,  the  oldest 
certainly  known  epic  poet,  who  is  generally  placed  about  the 
ist  Olympiad  (776  B.C.),  and  called  a  pupil  of  Homer.  This 
poem  reached  from  the  death  of  Hector  to  that  of  Achilles, 
and  told  of  the  arrival  of  the  Amazons  and  the  Ethiopians  to 
aid  Troy.  It  was  even  tacked  on  to  the  Iliad  by  a  modifica- 
tion of  the  last  line.  Achilles  was  the  central  figure  of  tfie 
0oem,  and  appears  to  have  been  treated  with  breadth  and 
power.  He  slays  Penthesilea,  and  then  feels  a  pang  of  re- 
morse on  beholding  her  beauty.  This  is  ridiculed  by  Thersites, 
whom  he  kills  in  a  fit  of  passion.  Antilochus,  who  seems  in 
some  sort  to  have  been  the  Patroclus  of  the  poem,  is  slain 
by  Memnon  while  endeavouring  to  save  his  father,  Nestor. 
Achilles  then  slays  Memnon,  and  is  himself  slain,  in  his  pursuit 
of  the  Trojans,  by  Paris.  The  contest  for  the  arms  of  Achilles, 
and  the  suicide  of  Ajax,  concluded  the  ALthiopis,  if,  indeed, 
the  poem  called  the  Sack  of  Ilium,  by  the  same  author,  in 
two  books,  was  not  originally  connected  with  the  sEthiopis. 
(3)  But  the  arrangers  of  the  mythical  cycle  preferred,  on  the 
Sack  of  Troy,  a  poem  of  Lesches  called  the  Little  Iliad,  by 
Pausanias  also  the  Sack  of  Ilium.  This  Lesches  was  a  Lesbian, 
and  contemporary  with  Archilochus  (about  Ol.  30).  He  re- 
lated, apparently  in  more  of  a  chronicler's  than  a  poet's  spirit, 
the  events  from  the  contest  about  Achilles'  arms  to  the  actual 
fall  of  Troy.  Odysseus  was  his  principal  hero.  (4)  The 
Nostoi,  in  five  books,  by  Agias  of  Trcezen,  but  often  quoted 
anonymously.  He  sang  of  the  adventures  of  the  heroes  apart 
from  Odysseus,  especially  the  Atridse,  and  described  the  regions 
of  the  dead  in  a  passage  referred  to  by  Pausanias.  (5)  The 
Telegonia,  by  Eugammon  of  Cyrene,  who  is  placed  about  the 
53rd  Ol.  He  described  the  adventures  of  Odysseus,  Tele- 
machus,  and  of  Telegonus,  son  of  Odysseus  and  Circe,  and 
thus  completed  the  Trojan  cycle.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  give 
similar  details  about  the  Theban  cycle  which  has  no  interest 
to  us  except  that  the  tragic  poets  borrowed  largely  from  it.1 

1  The  principal  poems  of  which  we  have  any  report  are  the  epic  of 
OEdipus,  ascribed  to  Kinoethon,  then  an  old  Thebais  by  an  unknown  poet, 
followed  by  the  Epigoni  of  Antimachus  of  Teos.  The  capture  of  CEchalia, 
and  the  epics  on  the  Minyans,  lie  outside  this  series,  but  akin  to  it. 


88  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  VI. 

§  72.  Unfortunately,  the  extant  fragments  of  these  poems 
are  so  trifling — amounting  in  all  to  some  sixty  lines — as  to  afford 
us  in  themselves  no  adequate  means  of  judging  their  authors' 
merits.  They  are  all  quoted  in  the  appendix  to  Welcker's 
Epischer  Cychis,  and  the  main  body  of  that  work  is  an  ingenious 
attempt  to  vindicate  the  old  cyclic  poets  against  the  systematic 
neglect  or  even  disparagement  of  classical  days — I  mean  the 
neglect  of  them  as  literature,  though  they  were  the  great  mine 
from  which  the  tragic  poets  drew  their  plots.  On  the  other  hand, 
Colonel  Mure,  in  his  excellent  second  volume,  has  put  together 
all  that  can  be  learned  from  analysing  the  extant  fragments, 
and  has  based  an  adverse  verdict  strictly  on  two  famous 
judgments  preserved  to  us  in  the  Poetic,  of  which  this  is  the 
substance.  Aristotle  compares  the  nature  of  the  unity  re- 
quisite for  history,  which  he  calls  merely  chronological,  and 
that  for  poetry,  which  must  be  logical ;  nor  is  it  enough  that  the 
action  should  be  laid  in  one  division  of  time,  or  centred  about 
one  hero.  He  further  distinguishes  in  poetry  the  epic  and 
the  tragic  unity,  of  which  the  former  is  the  larger,  and  admits  of 
episodes,  while  the  latter  is  shorter  and  stricter.  But  in  speak- 
ing generally  of  the  unity  of  story  in  both  epic  and  tragic 
poetry,  he  asserts  that  almost  all  epic  poets  had  been  content 
with  a  mechanical  unity,  whereas  Homer,  with  superior  tact, 
whether  instinctive  or  acquired,  had  chosen  subjects  of  which 
the  parts  are  easily  comprehended  and  naturally  grouped  under 
a  real  and  logical  unity.  In  this  he  contrasts  him  especially 
with  the  authors  of  the  Cypria  and  the  Little  Iliad,  and  ob- 
serves that  only  one,  or  at  most  two,  tragedies  can  be  derived 
from  the  Iliad  or  from  the  Odyssey,  whereas  many  can  be  de- 
rived (and  indeed  were  derived)  from  the  Cypria,  and  at  least 
eight,  which  he  mentions,  from  the  Little  Iliad.  Unfortunately, 
this  latter  passage  in  the  Poetic  (c.  23)  is  hopelessly  corrupt, 
and  conflicts  not  only  with  the  plain  facts  of  the  history  of 
tragedy,  but  with  other  statements  in  this  very  treatise.  It  is 
said  to  be  absurd  (c.  18,  §  4)  to  work  the  whole  Iliad  into  one 
tragedy;  it  is  further  asserted  (c.  27,  §  13)  that  from  any  epic 
poem  many  tragedies  may  be  formed — an  obvious  fact,  and  in 
accordance  with  actual  literary  history.  No  doubt  ingenious 


en.  vi.  THE  CYCLIC  POETS.  89 

critics  have  found  means  of  reconciling  these  inconsistencies ; 
they  make  Aristotle  speak  at  one  time  of  the  central  plot  only 
of  the  Homeric  poems ;  at  another  of  the  whole  poems,  in- 
cluding the  episodes  ;  they  emend  the  text,  and  by  these  and 
other  contrivances  devise  a  theory  which  they  endeavour  to 
force  upon  the  facts. 

I  prefer  to  set  aside  the  criticisms  of  the  Poefic,  either  as 
not  being  the  genuine  text  and  sense  of  Aristotle,  or  else,  as 
showing  in  that  great  man  such  a  traditional  reverence  for  the 
Homeric  poems  as  made  him  an  unsafe  critic  when  they  were 
concerned.  The  unity  of  the  Iliad  is  not  adequately  sustained 
or  highly  artistic.  Many  tragedies  could  be,  and  have  been, 
legitimately  constructed  from  it.  As  far  as  we  can  see,  the 
poem  of  Arctinus  was  similarly  grouped  about  a  central  figure 
— Achilles,  whose  death  was  the  climax— but  introduced  im- 
portant and  striking  episodes.  It  is  therefore  better  to  refrain 
from  using  the  so-called  authority  of  Aristotle  in  this  matter. 

Colonel  Mure,  however,  arguing  from  this,  and  from  the 
low  esteem  shown  by  the  rest  of  our  authorities,  degrades 
the  epic  cycle  to  a  series  of  metrical  chronicles  maintaining  no 
proper  unity,  and  dealing,  moreover,  not  unfrequently  in  low  and 
disgusting  details.  He  is  no  doubt  right  in  showing  that  the 
portraiture  of  many  of  the  tragic  heroes,  especially  of  Menelaus 
and  Ulysses,  which  is  so  different  from  that  of  Homer,  comes 
from  the  cyclic  poems ;  when  he  asserts  that  the  poets  put 
themselves  forward  too  prominently,  as  compared  with  the  self- 
effacement  of  Homer,  he  says  what  is  probable  with  later  poets, 
but  not  provable  from  our  fragments.  I  need  not  prosecute  the 
matter  further,  but  will  conclude  by  observing  that  several  good 
critics,  such  as  Welcker  and  Bernhardy,  place  Arctinus  above  the 
others.  They  attribute  to  him  the  origination  of  the  Amazonian 
and  Ethiopian  legends  ;  they  see  in  his  fragments  seriousness 
and  tragic  gloom  as  compared  with  the  lighter  and  less 
dignified  Lesches.  Beyond  this  cautious  thinkers  are  now 
slow  to  venture.  The  rest  of  the  cyclic  poets  are  hidden  from 
us  in  a  gloom  which  only  the  discovery  of  a  new  MS.  may 
some  day  dispel.  Even  Quintus  Smyrnaeus,  whose  Posthomericct  ~ 
cover  much  of  the  ground  occupied  by  them,  seems  not  to 


90  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  vr. 

have  used  them  diligently,  or  to  have  reproduced  their  treat- 
ment. 

§  73.  The  present  place  seems  the  most  proper  to  give  an  ac- 
count of  the  Batracho-myo-machia  (often  cited  as  yuvojua^ta  for 
shortness),  or  'Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice,'  which  is  the  only 
mock  epic  remaining  to  us  in  early  Greek  literature,  and  which, 
though  it  excited  little  attention  of  old,  has  given  rise  to  many 
translations  and  imitations  among  the  Italians  and  French 
since  the  Renaissance.  The  poem,  as  it  now  exists,  con- 
sists of  316  hexameters,  and  though  far  removed  from  the 
style  and  power  of  Homer,  to  whom  it  was  generally  attri- 
buted in  uncritical  days,  has  more  merit  than  is  conceded  to 
it  by  recent  commentators.  By  some  authorities  Pigres,  the 
son  of  Artemisia,  to  whom  the  Margites  is  also  ascribed,  is 
named  as  the  author — a  theory  adopted  by  Baumeister,  and 
to  which  I  should  unhesitatingly  subscribe,  as  the  most  un- 
likely tradition  in  the  world  to  be  false,  were  not  Pigres  already 
reported  the  author  of  the  Margites.  This  obscure  poet  may 
have  been  suggested  by  critics  who  felt  that  the  work  was 
not  Homer's,  and  could  find  no  more  likely  person  than  the 
accredited  author  of  another  sportive  poem,  once  called  Ho- 
meric also.  This  consideration  makes  the  authorship  of  Pigres 
not  improbable,  but  rather  doubtful.  There  is  evidence — from 
the  familiar  allusion  to  writing  at  the  opening,  from  the 
mention  of  the  cock  (v.  193),  from  the  Attic  use  of  the  article, 
and  the  frequent  shortening  of  vowels  before  mute  and  liquid 
(Attica  correptiones,  as  they  are  called) — that  in  the  present 
form  the  poem  cannot  date  from  a  time  much  earlier  than 
yEschylus,  and  that  it  is,  besides,  corrupted  and  interpolated 
considerably  by  far  later  hands. 

The  plot  is  witty,  and  not  badly  constructed.  A  mouse, 
after  escaping  from  the  pursuit  of  a  cat,  is  slaking  its  thirst  at  a 
pond,  when  it  is  accosted  by  a  frog,  King  Puff-cheek,  the  son 
of  Peleus  (in  the  sense  of  muddy),  who  asks  it  to  come  and  see 
his  home  and  habits.  The  mouse  consents,  but  the  sudden 
appearance  of  an  otter  terrifies  the  frog,  and  makes  him  dive, 
leaving  the  mouse  to  perish,  after  sundry  epic  exclamations  and 
soliloquies.  A  bystanding  mouse  brings  the  tidings  to  the  tribe, 


CH.  vi  THE   BATRACHOMYOMACHIA.  91 

who  forthwith  prepare  for  war,  and  arm  themselves,  sending  a 
formal  declaration  to  the  frogs.  The  deliberations  of  Zeus  and 
Athena,  'as  to  what  part  they  will  take  in  the  war,  are  really  comic, 
and  a  very  clever  parody  on  Homer.  Then  follows  quite  an  epic 

*  w.  160-200: 

*jQs  apa  (poivriffas  oirXois  eveSvffev  airavras. 
<pv\\ots  (lev  /uaAa^oDj'  Kvf)/j.as  eas  a/^eKaAtn^cw, 
6capriKas  5"  elx°v  Ka\wv  x\oep£iv  airb  ffevrKwv, 
<pv\\a  8e  ruv  Kpafj-fiiav  els  affiriSas  ev  tfffKqffav, 
eyxos  5'  o^vffxoivos  eKacrrcp  (i.a.Kpbs  aptpei, 
Kal  ra  Ktpa  fcoxA.iwj'  XeirrSiv  e/caAuirre  Kapriva. 
(Jtpa^dfj.evoi  8'  fffrrtcrav  fir  o%07?s  v\^7]\ricrii', 
fffiov-res  A.rf7xas,  Ovpov  8'  t/j.w\riVTO  e/cotrTos. 

Zevs  5e  Oeovs  KaXetras  els  ovpavbv  a<TTep6et>Ta, 
Kal  iro\efj.ov  irXrjduv  Sei|as,  Kparepovs  re  /j.ax~nfds, 
vo\\ovs  Kal  fj.eyd\ovs  r)5'  ey^ea  fiaxpa,  (ptp 
dlos  Kevravptav  ffTparbs  ep^erai  r)e  riydvTwv, 
•^8u  ye\Siv  tpeeive-  -rives  PaTpaxonrtf  apwyol 
•S)  fj.va\v  a.9a.va.T<av  ;  Kal  'Afl^vaiTjv  irpoaeenrev 


Kal  ydp  ffov  Kara  vr\bv  del  ffKiprcaffiv  airavres, 
Kviffffr)  repTr6fj.evoi  Kal  eSetr/J-acriv  eK  Qvffidtav. 

*Q.s  &p  etpri  Kpoci'STjy  rbv  Se  irpoffeeurev  ' 
S>  irdrep,  OVK  &y  TTCOTTOT"  ey&  /j.vffl  reip 
e\6otrjv  eirapiay6s,  eirel  sca/ca  7roA.A.a  /u,'  eopyav, 
ffrefj.fj.ara  fiKdirrovres  Kal  \vxfovs  e'iveK   e\a.iov. 
rovro  tie  /JLOV  Xii\v  eSawe  fypevas,  old  (JL   epe^av. 
ireirXov  fj.ov  Karerpu^av,  %>v  ffcixpava  KafMvffa 
eK  poSdvris  \eirrrjs,  Kal  ari]fj.ova  \eirrbv  evrjffa, 
rpcay\as  r'  ^jj.ivoli\ffav'  6  8'  ^TTTJTTJS'  J.oi  eireffrr), 
Kal  iroXv  fj.e  irpaffaei  •  rovrov  xaPlv  e^tapyifffiat. 
Xp^ffafiei/r]  yap  S(pava,  Kal  OVK  exf>>  avraTroSovvat 
a\\'  ouS"  &s  parpdxotffiv  apr]ye/ji.ev  OVK  e6e\T]ff<o. 
eiVl  yap  ouS'  aurol  <ppevas  «/uireSof  a\\d  fj.e 
eK  iro\eu.ov  aviovffav,  ^irel  \iriv  eKoiriaOrjv, 
virvov  5evofJ.evr)v,  OVK  efaffav  Bopvfiovvres, 
ouS'  6\iyoi>  Ka/j.fj.vffai-  Zyla  8'  &VTTVOS  KareKel^ 
T})V  Ke(pa\$ii>  a\yovo~a,  etas  efi&viffev  a\eKr<ap. 
oAA.'  aye,  iravcriifi-effda,  8eol,  rovroiffiv  a.pl]yeiv, 
fj.i]  Ke  ns  T]fj.ei<j)v  rpcaOy  jSe'Aei  b£v6evn, 
fj.i)ris  Kal  \6yxy<pL  rvwfi  5e/j,as  ye  /xa^aip??' 
fiffl  yap  ayxepaxoi,  Kal  el  6ebs  avrios  eXQoi  • 
irdvres  8"  ovpav66er  repirdifj-eda  8rjpu>  opSivres. 


92  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  VI. 

battle,  with  deliberate  inconsistencies,  such  as  the  reappear- 
ance of  several  heroes  already  killed.  The  frogs  are  worsted, 
and  the  victorious  mice  are  not  even  deterred  by  the  thunder 
of  Zeus,  but  are  presently  put  to  flight  by  the  appearance  of  an 
army  of  crabs  to  assist  the  defeated  frogs. 

The  German  destructive  critics  think  the  extant  poem  was 
put  together  from  fragments  of  earlier  mock  epics  of  the  same 
kind.  But  of  this  we  have  no  evidence.  The  opening  invo- 
cation is  that  of  a  Hesiodic  bard  (addressing  the  choir  of  the 
Muses  from  Helicon),  and  not  of  a  Homerid.  Hence  it  is 
not  impossible  that  the  idea  of  such  a  mock  epic  originated  in 
Boeotia  (where  both  frogs  and  mice  must  always  have  been 
particularly  abundant),  and  was  intended  by  the  didactic  and 
practical  school  of  Hesiod  as  a  moral  reproof  of  the  lighter 
and  more  superstitious  Ionic  singers.  But  this  is  only  a  con- 
jecture ;  the  general  complexion  of  the  poem,  as  we  have  it, 
being  certainly  Attic.  The  earliest  allusion  to  it  in  Greek 
literature  seems  to  be  a  sarcasm  of  Alexander  the  Great,  quoted 
by  Plutarch  in  his  Life  (cap.  28).  The  Alexandrian  critics  are 
silent  about  it,  so  far  as  we  know.  Several  Roman  poets  under 
the  Empire — Statius,  Martial,  and  Fulgentius — allude  to  it  as  a 
relaxation  of  the  great  author  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 

Bibliographical.  Our  MSS.  seem  all  copied  from  one  arche- 
type of  the  Byzantine  period,  ignorantly  and  carelessly  written. 
From  this  Baumeister  has  shown  two  families  of  MSS.  to  be 
derived,  one  represented  by  two  Bodleian  (cod.  Baroc.  46  and 
64),  which  are  by  no  means  the  oldest,  but  which  are  tolerably 
faithful  copies  of  the  archetype,  even  in  its  blunders.  The 
other  family  is  very  numerous,  and  comprises  our  oldest  MSS., 
viz.  the  Bodleian  cod.  Baroc.  50  (fol.  358)  of  the  tenth  century, 
the  Laurentian  (Plut.  xxxii.  3)  of  the  eleventh,  a  Palatine  (at 
Heidelberg)  of  the  twelfth,  and  an  Ambrosian  (i.  4,  super)  of 
the  thirteenth.  There  are  many  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
These  are  deliberately  interpolated  and  emended  by  scribes 
endeavouring  to  restore  or  improve  the  original.  Some  twenty 
have  been  collated,  and  at  least  thirty  more  still  await  investi- 
gation. This  family  of  MSS.  shows  a  decomposition  of  the 
text  almost  without  parallel,  as  may  be  seen  from  a  glance  at 


CH.  vi.  &SOP.  93 

Baumeister's  edition.  Most  of  them  have  copious  scholia  and 
notes  by  Byzantine  grammarians.  Those  of  Moschopulos,  if 
they  indeed  exist  (cf.  Baumeister,  p.  10),  are  as  yet  un- 
published. The  earliest  translation  is  by  Sommariva,  dated 
Verona,  1470,  but  the  date  is  rejected  as  spurious  by  Giuliari, 
the  learned  historian  of  Veronese  typography.  There  is  a 
translation  into  low  Greek  by  Demetrius  Zenas,  in  1534  (re- 
printed in  Ilgen,  and  by  Mullach,  Berlin,  1837),  which  shows 
the  text  he  used  to  be  not  different  from  ours.  The  book  was 
first  printed,  in  alternate  black  and  red  lines,  at  Venice  in  i4861 
— the  first  Greek  classic  ever  printed — and  this  very  rare  edition 
was  imitated  (only  as  to  colours)  by  Mich.  Mattaire,  in  his 
edition  with  notes  (London,  1721).  The  Florentine  Homer  of 
1488  is  the  basis  of  most  following  editions,  e.g.  those  of  Ilgen 
(with  the  Hymns,  1796),  Matthiae,  F.  A.  Wolf,  who  asserted 
our  text  to  be  a  mere  conglomerate,  Bothe,  Frank,  and,  lastly, 
Baumeister  (Gottingen,  1852),  whose  little  book  is  a  model  of 
care  and  diligence,  and  whose  account  of  the  text  seems  very 
complete,  except  that  he  does  not  specify  the  age  of  any  of  the 
MSS.  which  he  discusses.  Since  the  Renaissance  the  poem 
has  excited  a  good  deal  of  attention,  Melanchthon  and  others 
imagining  a  hidden  political  or  moral  import  under  its  parody. 
There  is  a  spirited  old  translation  by  George  Chapman,  re- 
printed by  J.  Russell  Smith  (London,  1858). 

§74.  The  'beast-epic'  we  have  been  considering  suggests 
naturally  a  more  general  inquiry  into  the  occurrence  of  beast- 
fables  in  Greek  literature.  This  form  of  imagination  was,  on 
the  whole,  foreign  to  the  Greeks,  and  there  are  many  indications 
that  the  supposed  father  of  fable,  ^Esop,  was  a  Syrian,  Phrygian, 
or  ^Ethiopian.  Some  have  argued  that  he  was  an  Egyptian. 
Nevertheless  the  fable,  originally  called  dlvoc,  though  not  fre- 
quent, is  found  at  intervals  in  various  kinds  of  Greek  poetry. 
We  have  in  Hesiod  the  fable  of  the  falcon  and  dove  ;  in  Stesi- 
chorus,  that  of  the  horse  and  his  rider ;  in  Archilochus,  stories 

1  Per  Leonicum  Cretensern.  There  is  a  beautiful  copy  in  Earl  Spencer's 
library  at  Althorp.  The  grammar  of  Lascaris,  the  Milan  JEsop,  and  a  Greek 
and  Latin  Psalter  of  1481  are  the  only  earlier  books  (not  quotations)  in  Greek 
type  which  I  can  find.  They  are  all  to  be  seen  in  the  Althorp  library. 


94  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE-     CH.  VI. 

about  the  fox  ;  in  the  elder  Simonides,  sketches  of  character 
derived  from  various  animals ;  in  ^Eschylus,  the  Libyan  fable 
which  Byron  has  so  well  adapted  in  his  lines  on  Kirke  White. 

Though  Hesiod  was  named  as  the  earliest  poet  who  used 
this  form  of  apologue,  its  invention  was  systematically  attri- 
buted to  JEsop,  an  obscure  and  perhaps  mythical  figure,  whose 
historical  reality  is  now  generally  rejected  since  the  searching 
article  on  this  subject  by  Welcker.1  Nevertheless,  Herodotus 
speaks  of  him  as  a  slave  at  Samos  in  the  sixth  century.  Aris- 
tophanes and  Plato  both  speak  of  ^Esopic  jokes  as  a  distinct 
kind  of  fun,  and  Aristotle  tells  of  his  murder  by  the  Delphians 
having  been  atoned  with  great  difficulty  by  the  special  com- 
mand of  the  oracle.  It  was  added  that  JEsop  came  to  life  again, 
owing  to  his  piety.2  In  spite  of  these  definite  allusions,  the 
list  of  which  is  by  no  means  complete,  we  cannot  fix  either  the 
age  or  nationality  of  this  strange  personage,  whom  later  art 
represented  a  hideous  and  deformed  creature,  perhaps  to 
indicate  his  nearer  approach  to  the  lower  animals,  and  his 
peculiar  sympathy  for  their  habits.  Such  is  the  conception  of  the 
famous  statue  now  in  the  Villa  Albani  at  Rome. 

This  side  of  literature,  however,  long  remained  a  mere 
amusement  in  society,  or  among  the  ignorant  classes,  nor  can 
we  regard  such  a  literary  v/ork  as  Aristophanes'  Birds  or  the 
Myomachia  in  any  other  light  than  a  most  exceptional  product.3 
When  original  power  was  failing,  and  men  began  to  collect  the 
works  of  their  predecessors,  we  hear  that  Demetrius  Phalereus 
made  the  first  written  corpus  of  these  popular  stories,  no  doubt 
in  their  rude  prose  form.  Then  we  find  that  Callimachus 
sought  to  give  them  a  literary  tone  by  adapting  them  in  choli- 
ambic  metre,  no  doubt  the  best  metrical  form  which  could 
have  been  selected. 

But  so  little  prominence  did  he  give  to  this  side  of  his 

1  Rheln.  Mus.  vi.  366,  sq. 

2  Cf.  Herodotus,  ii.  134;  Aristoph.  Vesp.  1258,  1437,  andschol.;  Plato, 
Phado,  60  D,  Aristotle,  Frag.  445;  ^Eschylus,  Frag.  129. 

3  Our  early  allusions  seem  to  distinguish  Libyan,   Sybaritic,  Syrian, 
&c.  from  ^Esopic,  but  ultimately  jiC0os  Alcrtaireios  becomes  the  recognised 
expression  for  a  beast  fable. 


CH.  vi.  BABRIUS.  95 

multiform  literary  activity,  that  Babrius,  who  came  much  later, 
was  justly  regarded  as  the  originator  of  the  metrical  fable. 
This  remarkable  author,  of  unknown  date,  and  not  cited  by 
early  grammarians,  was  only  known  by  Suidas'  fragmentary  quo- 
tations until  the  discovery  of  two  MSS.  of  his  works  at  Mount 
Athos  by  Minas,  about  1840.  The  name  of  the  discoverer  na- 
turally suggested  doubts  as  to  the  genuineness  of  the  discovery, 
but  according  to  Dindorf  (Philol.  xvii.  pp.  321,  sq.)  there  is  no 
mistake  about  the  first;  the  second  is  probably  a  compilation 
by  Minas  from  preexisting  fragments.  Both  texts  were  printed 
by  Sir  G.  Lewis  (Oxon.  1846  ;  London,  1859),  but  Boissonade's 
(Paris,  1844)  is  the  editio  princeps,  and  Lachmann's  the  best,  at 
least  of  the  former  MS.  The  literary  merit  of  Babrius  is  very 
considerable,  though  he  does  not  belong  to  the  classical  period. 
As  for  the  ^Esopic  fables,  they  were  variously  collected  in  later 
days,  and  are  preserved  in  many  MSS.  throughout  Europe. 
The  collection  of  the  monk  Planudes,  with  a  life  of  ^Esop, 
was  printed  among  the  very  earliest  Greek  books  (Milan,  Bonus 
Accursius,  perhaps  as  early  as  1479) ;  the  latest  is  Klotz's 
(Leipzig,  1810).  There  are  besides  de  Furia's,  Coraes'  and 
Schneider's  collections,  all  printed  about  1810. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   DIDACTIC   EPOS.      HESIOD — THE  EARLY   PHILOSOPHERS. 

§  75.  GREAT  as  is  the  divergence  of  critics  about  the  Homeric 
poems,  it  seems  almost  unanimity  when  we  come  to  study  the 
modern  Hesiodic  literature.  Every  possible  theory,  every 
possible  critical  judgment  has  been  upheld  and  refuted;  so 
that,  after  toiling  through  wildernesses  of  German  books,  and 
tracts,  and  programs,  one  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  nothing 
has  been  gained,  nothing  proved,  and  that  the  field  is  still 
open  to  plain  common  sense,  as  well  as  to  new  flights  of  fancy. 

The  home  of  this  distinct  kind  of  epic  poetry,  called 
Didactic,  because  of  its  occasionally  moral  and  instructive 
tone,  was  not  originally l  a  sea-coast,  with  bays,  and  promon- 
tories, and  rocky  islands,  but  the  inland  of  Boeotia,  surrounded 
on  all  sides  by  mountain  chains,  with  rich  arable  soil  in  the 
plain,  and  light  pastures  on  the  higher  slopes ;  with  great 
sedgy  sheets  of  still  water  about  the  lowlands,  and  streams 
tumbling  from  the  hills.  It  was  a  climate,  says  the  poet  of  the 
Works  and  Days,  bad  in  winter,  trying  in  summer,  never  good ; 
and  this  he  says,  contrasting  it,  I  suppose,  with  what  his  father 
told  him,  or  what  he  himself  remembered  of  ^Eolic  Kyme,  upon 
the  rich  shore  of  Asia  Minor,  where  the  climate  of  old  was 
wonderful  even  to  the  Greeks.  But  he  has  certainly  exagge- 
rated the  faults  of  the  weather,  and  said  nothing  of  the  richness 
of  the  soil.2  Yet  no  doubt  the  extremes  of  cold  and  heat  were 

1  I  say  originally,  because  Bergk  follows  the  traditions  of  the  poet's 
death,  so  far  as  to  hold  his  ultimate  settlement  at  Naupactus,  and  to  call 
his  school  the  Locrian  School,  of  which  the  tin;  Nomrcuma  were  a  further 
development. 

-  Jt  is  worthy  of  note  that  Archilochus,  with  similar  injustice,  reviles 


CH.  vii.  CULTURE   OF  BCEOTIA.  97 

then  greater  than  they  now  are,  for  in  our  time  Boeotia  is  one 
of  the  loveliest  and  most  fertile  parts  of  Greece.  The  inhab- 
itants came  to  be  ridiculed  in  the  days  of  Attic  greatness  for 
heavy  eating,  and  for  their  dulness  and  stupidity — consequences 
attributed  to  their  moist  and  foggy  climate.  Such  Attic  jibes 
have  been  repeated  with  too  much  seriousness.  The  ancient 
worship  of  the  Muses  throughout  Boeotia,  the  splendour  of  the 
art  and  culture  of  the  old  Minyans  of  Orchomenus,  the  great 
burst  of  lyric  poetry  in  the  days  of  the  Persian  wars,  the 
broad  culture  of  Epaminondas,  and  through  him  of  Philip, 
and  lastly,  the  martinmas  summer1  of  Greek  literature  in 
Plutarch — all  these  facts,  apart  from. the  poetry  now  before  us, 
show  that  Boeotia,  as  we  might  expect  from  its  rich  and  well- 
watered  soil,  was  not  only  an  early  home  of  wealth  and 
civilisation,  but  sustained  its  intellectual  reputation  all  through 
Greek  history. 

Assuming  the  Works  and  Days  to  be  the  product  of  the 
genuine  Hesiod,  we  look  in  vain  for  any  certain  clue  to  the 
exact  period  of  the  poet's  life.  The  only  direct  allusion  is  to 
his  having  journeyed  to  Chalcis  in  Euboea  for  a  poetical  con- 
test at  the  funeral  games  given  for  Amphidamas,  at  which  he 
claims  to  have  carried  off  the  prize.2  But  the  only  clue  to  the 
date  of  Amphidamas  is  that  he  was  an  active  leader  in  the 

the  climate  and  soil  of  Thasos  (fr.  21,  ed.  Bergk),  for  Plutarch  says  :  — 
Ka.Qd.TTtp  'Apx't^oxos  TT}S  ®dcrov  TO.  Kapicofytpa.  ica.1  otVJireSa  irapopwv  Sia  rb 
vpaxv  Kal  avu!fjia\ov  Sif$a\e  T^JV  vrjffov,  eiirkv 

"H5e  8'  SKTT'  ovov  f>&xls 

effrriKtv  S\rjs  a.ypi-r\s  (Tfiffretyris' 

ov  yap  TI  Ka\bs  x&Pos  °vd'  f$i/J.fpos 

ou8'  epa.r6s,  olos  a/j.<pl  "Sipios  pods. 

Plutarch  might  have  said  the  very  same  thing  of  Hesiod,  unless,  indeed, 
we  hold  that  the  plain  of  Thebes  was  covered  with  forest  in  old  times,  as  is 
described  in  the  Homeric  Hymn  to  the  Pythian  Apollo. 

1  Cf.  Archbp.  Trench's  Plutarch  and  his  Age,  p.  II,  from  whom  I  gladly 
borrow  the  expression.  Thus  also  Mr.  Symonds  aptly  calls  the  Hero  and 
Leander  of  Musaeus  the  fair  November  day  of  Greek  poetry. 

-  This  contest  is  apparently  transferred  to  Delos,  and  described  as  con- 
sisting  in  singing  hymns  to  Apollo,  in  frag.  227.     We  shall  return  to 
this  point  when  speaking  of  the  Hymns. 
VOL.  I.— 5 


98  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

tedious  war  against  the  Eretrians  about  the  Lelantine  plain.1 
This  passage  about  the  poetical  tournament  at  Chalcis  is 
accordingly  declared  spurious  by  most  critics,  and  referred  to 
some  later  Hesiodic  bard,  who  was  confused  with  his  great 
predecessor,  just  as  the  blind  old  poet  of  Chios  (in  the  Hymn 
to  the  Delian  Apollo)  was  commonly  confused  with  Homer. 
Setting  aside,  therefore,  this  hint,  they  are  thrown  back  upon 
vaguer  inferences. 

The  poet  describes  no  monarchy,  but  an  aristocratical 
government,  as  ruling  over  his  native  place.  This  Ascra  was 
probably  under  the  sway  of  Thespiae,  which  maintained  its 
aristocratical  government  «up  to  late  days,  so  as  to  be  even  in 
Aristotle's  time  a  remarkable  example  for  citation.  It  is  said 
that  royalty  was  abolished  at  Thebes  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighth  century  KC.  ;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  Thebes  then 
controlled  a  large  district.  The  fact  that  Hesiod's  father 2 
came  back  from  the  ^olian  settlements  in  Asia  Minor — and 
on  account  of  poverty — suggests  that  the  colonies  had  been 
some  time  sent  out ;  yet  not  so  long  that  discontented  colonists 
had  forgotten  the  way  home,  or  their  sense  of  unity  with  the 
motherland.  But  the  poem  is  so  full  of  evident  interpolations, 
that  many  critics  reject  even  this  personal  statement  about  the 
poet's  parentage,  and  think  that  a  later  bard  inserted  it,  in 
order  to  inform  the  readers  of  the  poem  about  the  supposed 
author's  life. 

§  76.  From  a  conservative  point  of  view,  the  following 
seems  to  me  the  most  reasonable  theory  as  to  the  composition 
and  date  of  the  Works  and  Days. 

It  is  an  admitted  fact,  that  about  the  beginning  of  the 
seventh  century,  B.C.,  the  heroic  epics  of  the  Greeks  were 
being  supplanted  by  the  poetry  of  real  life — iambic  satire, 
elegiac  confessions,  gnomic  wisdom,  and  proverbial  philo- 

1  Cf.  Gottling's  Tref.,  p.  xxiii,  who  quotes  Plutarch's  Convivittm  (c.  10), 
with  additional  details.     But  the  genuineness  and  authority  of  this  tract 
is  denied  by  F.  Nietzsche  (Rhein.  Mus.  vol.  xxvi)  in  his  critical  examina- 
tion of  the  legends  of  Hesiod's  life. 

2  That  his  name  was  Dius  seems  more  than  doubtful.     Cf.  H.  Flach 
in  Hermes  for  1874,  p.  358. 


CH.  vii.         ORIGIN  OF  HES10DIC  POETRY.  99 

sophy.  The  Greeks  grew  tired  of  all  the  praise  of  courts  and 
ladies  and  bygone  wars,  and  turned  to  a  sober — nay  even 
exaggerated — realism,  by  way  of  reaction  from  the  worship  of 
Homeric  rhapsody.  The  father  and  forerunner  of  all  this 
school  is  clearly  Hesiod,  to  whom  the  critics  have  found  strong 
family  likenesses  in  Archilochus,  Simonides  of  Amorgos,  and 
Hipponax,  and  stronger  evidences  of  imitation  in  Alcseus  and 
Theognis.  The  Odyssey,  on  the  other  side,  both  in  the  society 
which  it  describes — the  lawless  rule  of  an  aristocratic  oligarchy; 
in  its  catalogue  of  fair  women,  the  prototype,  or  antitype,  of 
the  Hesiodic  Eoiai;  still  more,  in  the  sober  tone  of  its  diction, 
and  in  its  enumerations  of  names,  the  'Ho-tdcJeioe  ^apaKrrip  KO.T' 
oro/na  of  the  Alexandrian  critics — seems  the  foretaste,  or  per- 
haps the  heroic  expression,  of  this  changing  temper  in  the 
public  mind.  The  decisive  turning  point,  to  my  mind  a  marked 
epoch  in  the  history  of  Greek  literature,  is  the  great  poetical 
contest  at  the  funeral  games  of  Amphidamas  of  Chalcis,  when 
the  Hesiodic  poetry  defeated  its  Homeric  rival.  This  fact 
seemed  so  extraordinary  to  later  critics,  that,  when  they  wrote 
the  life  of  Hesiod,  and  the  Contest  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  they 
sought  to  invent  reasons — and  very  absurd  ones  they  were — 
for  such  a  result,  and  the  judges  (whose  names  were  remem- 
bered) were  held  up  to  ridicule.1 

Yet  a  more  philosophical  review  of  the  development  of 
Greek  poetry  shows  such  a  result  to  be  natural  and  necessary. 
The  Greek  public  was  presented  with  so  many  weak  and 
watery  epics,  with  so  many  faint  imitations  of  the  great  origi- 
nals, that  even  these  lost  their  charm,  and  were  a  weariness  to 
them.  Then  it  was  that  a  truly  original  poet  again  turned  his 
attention  to  the  only  real  source  of  life  in  any  literature — the 
songs  and  shrewd  sayings  of  the  people.  He  found  old 
gnomes  and  advices  about  practical  life,  rules  of  agriculture 
and  of  morals  fused  like  the  Roman  lady's  distaff  and  her 
chastity.2  He  recast  them  in  an  artistic  form,  retaining  suffi- 

1  TIavfiSov  4*7j$os  was  a  proverb  for  a  foolish  judgment,  Paneides,  the 
brother  of  Amphidamas,  being  named  as  the  judge  on  the  occasion. 

2  This  we  find  in  many  Roman  epitaphs,  e.g.  those  quoted  by  Momm- 
sen,  Rom.  Hist.  vol.  l.  p.  6l,  note  (Eng.  Trans.). 


loo  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.vn. 

cient  flavour  of  their  rudeness  to  preserve  their  charm  for 
audiences  weary  of  heroic  refinement.  Thus  arose  the  famous 
Works  and  Days,  the  homely  rival  of  Homeric  song,  the 
parent  of  Greek  gnomic  poetry,  the  great  hand-book  of 
moral  teaching  among  Greek  educators.  The  man  who 
gathered  and  systematised  this  old  folk  lore  and  folk  wisdom — 
who  combined  Ionic  treatment  with  a  Boeotian  subject — who 
tamed  the  rude  dialect  of  the  farmers  on  Helicon  into  an 
almost  epic  style — who  carried  back  Ionic  memories  to  his 
rugged  home — who  won  the  tripod  at  the  national  contest  of 
Chalcis — who  then  settled  near  Naupactus,  and  died  there — 
this  was  the  real  Hesiod.  He  was  not  removed  by  centuries 
from  the  poetry  which  directly  followed  his  lead.  He  was 
rather  the  first  of  a  close  and  continuous  series  of  poets  who 
took  up  his  realism,  though  they  freed  it  from  its  'Helot' 
flavour,  left  out  his  husbandry  and  his  addresses  to  rustics,  and 
gave  his  ethics  an  aristocratic  tone. 

Even  as  to  the  Hesiod  whom  we  possess,  I  cannot  be- 
lieve that  he  was  the  poet  of  the  lower  classes,  and  that 
his  great  originality  was  to  address  the  people.  No  doubt 
many  of  the  old  proverbs  and  agricultural  advices  he  gathered 
were  current  among  the  people ;  but  it  is  to  be  remarked  that 
the  poet  distinctly  addresses  princes  also,  and  gives  them 
a  moral  lecture  (w.  248,  sq.) ;  he  looks  upon  their  justice 
and  good  conduct  as  essential  to  the  people,  not  only  because 
they  are  its  judges,  but  because  their  sins  are  visited  by  Zeus 
upon  the  whole  people.  This  view  is  to  be  found  in  the 
Iliad.  Neither  does  Hesiod  speak  more  harshly  of  these 
princes  than  does  the  poet  of  the  Odyssey  in  his  picture 
of  the  suitors.  No  princes  are  attacked  or  lightly  spoken 
of  except  for  their  injustice.  All  this  is  consistent  with  an  age 
when  an  increasing  population  made  agriculture  more  im- 
portant, and  when  the  better  members  among  the  ruling  aris- 
tocrats wished  to  encourage  justice  and  diligence,  not  only  in 
their  subjects,  but  in  their  thoughtless  or  dissipated  equals. 
The  high  and  noble  view  of  the  unity  and  justice  of  the 
Supreme  Governor  of  the  world — to  the  complete  exclusion  of 
lesser  deities — is  the  most  striking  feature  of  the  poem,  and  its 


CH.  VII.  DATE  OF  HESIOD.  101 

most  curious  contrast  to  the  Theogony.  The  shepherd  class, 
by  the  way,  is  there  treated  with  contempt. 

§  77.  The  poet  of  the  Works  seems  to  me  to  have  lived 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century,  E.G.  Here  are  my 
reasons : — 

The  return  of  his  father  from  Kyme — from  a  rich  and  fer- 
tile sea-coast  to  a  poor  and  barren  upland  farm — can  only  be 
accounted  for  by  some  grave  misfortune  or  decay  in  the  pros- 
perity of  the  Asiatic  colonies.  This  is  most  easily  to  be  found 
in  the  rise  of  the  Lydian  power  under  Gyges,  after  the  opening 
of  the  seventh  century.  According  to  Strabo  and  Nicolaus 
Damasc.,1  this  king  possessed  the  whole  Troad  as  far  as 
Abydos,  and  therefore  must  have  possessed  the  intermediate 
territory,  which  included  the  inland  country  round  Kyme. 
The  father  of  the  poet  seems  to  have  taken  at  first  to  sea 
traffic,  but  with  little  satisfaction ;  and  thus,  as  his  agricultural 
prospects  were  spoiled  by  the  Lydian  conquest,  he  would  ulti- 
mately return  to  Boeotia,  from  which  we  may  conceive  his  fore- 
fathers to  have  originally  set  out. 

This  chronological  argument  is  evidently  strengthened  by 
the  further  allusion  to  the  games  at  Chalcis — probably  near 
the  conclusion  of  the  Lelantine  war.  Chalcis  and  Eretria, 
which  conten'ded  for  the  possession  of  the  disputed  plain, 
were  then  by  their  commerce  two  of  the  leading  cities  of 
Greece  Proper.  They  were  founding  colonies  all  over  the 
northern  ^Egean  and  the  Hellespont.  Their  war  became  so 
important,  that  all  mercantile  Greece,  especially  Samos  and 
'Miletus,2  joined  in  the  fray.  These  facts  have  led  historians  to 
see  in  this  war  a  great  commercial  conflict ;  and  therefore  to 
place  it  in  the  days  of  the  great  Hellenic  colonisation — about 
the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century.  If  my  argument  be 
correct,  we  must  bring  it  down  some  fifty  years,  or  at  least  we 
must  bring  down  the  death  of  Amphidamas,  the  'king'  of 
Chalcis,  to  a  period  after  the  Lydian  pressure  had  been  for 

1  Quoted  by  Grote,  iii.  p.  303  (orig.  ed.).    Gyges  reigned  about  680  B.C. 

2  Herodotus  says  (bk.  v.  99)  that  the  Eretrians  were  repaying  (in  500 
B.C.)  a  debt  to  the  Milesians  for  helping  them  previously.     It  seems  absurd 
to  imagine  this  obligation  incurred  more  than  200  years  before. 


102  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

some  time  felt.1  But  there  is  no  difficulty  in  doing  so,  and 
E.  Curtius'  date  for  the  Lelantine  war  (704  B.C.)  is  only,  I 
should  think,  a  tentative  one,  and  based  on  the  received  dates 
for  the  principal  colonies,  which  are  all,  I  suspect,  at  least  a 
generation  too  early.  But  to  prove  this  would  lead  us  too  far 
from  our  literary  history.2 

It  remains  to  notice  what  can  be  said  against  this  theory, 
which  brings  down  the  date  of  Hesiod  so  low,  and  what  evi- 
dence there  is  of  his  greater  antiquity.  I  pass  by  the  argu- 
ment of  Bergk,3  who  says  that  Hesiod  must  have  preceded 
the  ist  Olympiad  in  date,  because  Eumelus  of  Corinth,  who 
is  said  to  have  been  active  about  Ol.  10,  would  else  be  the 
leader  of  this  school  of  poetry,  whereas  he  clearly  follows 
Hesiod.  This  argument  contains  nothing  but  ungrounded 
assumptions.  We  know  nothing  of  Eumelus,  except  that  all 
the  works  attributed  to  him  (save  one  lyric  prosodion) — that 
is  to  say,  the  only  works  which  may  have  been  Hesiodic  in 
character — were  thought  spurious  by  Pausanias.  His  date  is 
unknown  ;  his  very  personality  hazy  and  doubtful. 

§  78.  There  is  indeed  a  general  belief  in  the  primitiveness  of 
Hesiod,  and  a  desire  to  place  him  far  anterior  to  the  historical 
poets  of  the  seventh  century  ;  but  this  also  rests  on  no  basis  ot 
any  value,  except  the  statement  of  Herodotus,  whose  real  inten- 
tion was  not  to  raise,  but  to  lower,  the  date  of  Homer  and  He- 
siod. They  lived,  says  he,  four  hundred  years  before  my  time, 
and  not  more.  But  unfortunately  he  made  them  contemporary, 
and  this  takes  greatly  from  his  authority  about  Hesiod  :  for  it 
has  been  made  quite  plain  by  modern  criticism  that  Hesiod  pre- 
supposes Homer,  and  is  therefore  posterior.  Of  this  there  is 

1  I  think  the  allusion  in  Theognis  (v.  891)  to  the  ravaging  of  the  Le 
lantine  plain  must  refer  to  this  Lelantine  war  as  contemporary,  and  must 
be  an  older  fragment  transferred  to  the  conglomerate  which  now  passes 
under  his  name.      Indeed,   the  date  of  Theognis  is  not  very  certain  • 
but  most   critics  place  him   about   560  B.C.     The   lines  make  the  wai 
contemporary  with    the  Cypselids,  and  therefore  not   concluded   before 
657  B.C. 

2  See  the  evidence  for  the  Lelantine  war  brought  together  and  discussed 
in  the  Appendix  to  my  article  on  Hesiod  in  Hermathena,  No.  IV.  p.  325, 

3  LG.  i.  p.  937. 


CH.  VII.  THE  FIVE  AGES  OF  MAN.  103 

one  clear  proof.  I  put  no  stress  on  the  shortening  of  syllables, 
or  other  linguistic  evidences,  as  the  dialect  of  Hesiod  is  not 
the  same  as  that  of  the  Ionic  School,  and  therefore  what  seem 
later  modifications  may  be  original  differences.  But  in  the 
description  of  the  Four  Ages  of  Man— the  Gold,  the  Silver,  the 
Bronze,  and  the  Iron — the  gradual  decadence  is  broken  in 
upon  (after  the  Bronze)  by  a  fifth  race,  apparently  better  than 
two  of  its  predecessors — that  of  the  heroes  who  fought  and 
died  at  the  wars  of  Thebes1  and  Troy.  It  is  evident  that  no 
historical  place  could  be  found  for  them,  nor  were  they  ad- 
mitted in  the  legend  which  compared  the  succeeding  races  of 
men  to  the  metals.  But  so  powerful  was  the  effect  of  the 
Heroic  epics,  that  the  shrewd  poet  of  the  Works  thought  it 
necessary  to  find  a  niche  for  this  race  in  his  Temple  of  Fame ; 
and  so  the  legend  was  distorted  to  admit  them  as  a  fifth  race, 
created  out  of  due  time  by  the  Father  of  gods  and  of  men.2  This 
fact  in  itself  would  prove  that  Homer  was  considerably  anterior 
to  Hesiod,  if  it  were  not  already  perfectly  plain  to  anyone  who 
has  studied  the  logical  development  of  Greek  literature.  If 
any  critic  urges  the  primitive  complexion  of  many  of  the  saws 
of  Hesiod  in  defence  of  his  antiquity,  I  will  remind  him  that 
my  theory  postulates  this  very  thing — the  adoption,  by  the  his- 
torical Hesiod  of  the  seventh  century,  of  all  the  fine  old  sayings 
which  floated  among  the  people.  I  will  even  concede  that 
there  was  an  earlier  collection3 :  but  it  seems  to  me  impossible 

1  This  seems  to  imply  that  the  epics  based  on  the  Theban  cycle  of 
myths  were  already  composed,  and  widely  celebrated — a  condition  of  things 
pointing  to  a  date  after  700  B.C. 

2  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  old  legends  of  both  Iranians  and  Indians  con- 
tain accounts  of  five  races  of  anterior  men,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  find  a 
similar  division  underlying  the  Semitic  history  in  Genesis.     It  is,  there- 
fore, probable  enough  that  the  oldest  Greek  legends  told  oifrue  races,  and 
that  the  number  was  no  novelty  invented  by  the  poet.     But  admitting  this, 
the  distortion  of  the  legend  to  suit  the  glories  of  the  epic  heroes  of  Troy 
and  Thebes  is  the  more  remarkable,  and  an  even  clearer  proof  of  the  re- 
putation of  Homer  and  his  school.     In  all  the  other  legends  of  five  races 
the  decline  of  excellence  seems  to  be  gradual. 

3  The  enigmatical  epitaph  ascribed  (on  Aristotle's  authority)  to  Pindar, 

X<£pe  81s  r]^r](ras  Kal  Sis  rd<pov  avTi/SoA^aaj 
'HtrioS',  avOptuirois  fj,erpov  f-^wv  <ro(j>ias, 


104  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE     CH.  VH. 

to  detect  it  and  separate  it  from  the  later  materials.  It  is  also 
clearly  to  be  admitted  that  when  the  poems  came  to  be  used  as 
handbooks  of  education,  many  wise  and  useful  proverbs  were 
foisted  in,  some  from  later,  some  from  earlier,  authors.  There 
is  evidence  of  distinctly  inconsistent  proverbs  being  thus 
brought  together,  as  we  find  it  perpetually  the  case  in  the 
very  similar  poet,  Theognis.  The  very  best  lines  of  this  kind 
being  probably  those  chosen  for  the  purpose,  it  is  surely  a 
perfectly  idle  proceeding  to  endeavour  to  restore  the  ori- 
ginal poem  by  picking  out  the  good  lines,  and  rejecting  what 
appears  to  be  inferior  or  weak  The  taste  of  the  German 
critics  who  have  attempted  this  is  not  beyond  cavil,  and  they, 
of  course,  differ  widely  from  one  another  in  their  sesthetic 
judgments  ;  but,  without  disputing  these,  we  may  hold  fairly 
that  many  a  line  may  be  interpolated,  because  it  is  good  and 
striking,  and  that  many  a  line  has  held  its  place,  in  spite  of  its 
weakness,  because  it  was  acknowledged  by  tradition  as  genuine. 
Nothing  can  be  more  absurd  than  to  argue  that,  because  a  poet 
is  a  great  poet,  all  that  he  composes  must  be  great,  or  even  con- 
sistent with  itself.  If,  as  I  believe,  the  original  Hesiod  com- 
piled from  older  materials,  perhaps  not  very  easily  fused ;  and 
if  most  of  the  interpolations  which  the  critics  allege  are  by 
them  admitted  to  be  so  ancient,  that  the  poems  were  not  much 
different  in  Plato's  day  from  their  present  form,  it  is  surely  idle 
to  attempt  the  separation  of  these  various  strata.  The  procems 
of  both  Works  and  Theogony  may  be  rejected  on  fair  evi- 
dence, and  I  think  there  has  been  patching  clearly  detected  in 
the  long  procem  of  the  latter ;  but  beyond  this  we  can  reject 
with  certainty  only  a  very  few  passages.  We  may  suspect  a 
great  many,  but  have  no  sufficient  evidence  to  condemn  them. 
§  79.  Before  proceeding  to  an  analysis  of  the  extant  works 
of  Hesiod,  a  word  should  be  said  about  the  legends  of  his  death, 

is  only  explicable,  according  to  Gb'ttiing  (pref.  ad  Hes.  p.  13),  by  assum- 
ing two  Hesiods,  of  whom  two  tombs  were  shown.  The  Orchomenians 
admitted  this,  but  said  that  the  bones  had  been  transferred  from  Naupactus 
(or  from  Ascra),  owing  to  an  oracle.  But  as  Aristotle  is  speaking  only  of 
a  second  tomb,  I  suspect  rift-fiffas,  in  spite  of  the  fitness  in  form,  to  be  a 
spurious  word,  concealing  some  quite  different  sense. 


CH.  VII.       LEGENDS  OF  HESIOD'S  DEATH.  105 


preserved  at  length  in  the  yivog  'llatofiov  of  Tzetzes,  and  the 
dywr.  After  his  alleged  victory  at  Chalcis  he  went  to  Delphi, 
where  the  oracle  told  him  to  avoid  the  fair  grove  of  Nemea, 
where  the  goal  of  death  was  destined  for  him.1  Accordingly, 
avoiding  the  Nemea  in  Peloponnesus,  he  went  to  live  at 
(Enoe  in  Locris,  near  Naupactus,  with  Amphidamas  and 
Ganyctor,  sons  of  Phegeus.  The  coincidence  of  name  with 
the  king  of  Chalcis  at  the  games  is  curious.  These  men, 
accusing  him  of  having  seduced  their  sister  Clymene,  mur- 
dered him,  and  threw  him  into  the  sea  ;  but  the  body  came 
to  land  on  the  shore  between  Locris  and  Eubcea  (apparently  a 
confusion  between  the  two  separate  countries  called  Locris), 
and  was  buried  at  the  sacred  grove  of  Nemea  in  CEnoe.  The 
people  of  Orchomenus  afterwards  removed  the  body,  by  advice 
of  an  oracle,  and  buried  it  in  the  middle  of  their  agora.  The 
epitaph  on  this  tomb  has  been  quoted  above.2  I  should  not 
mention  these  apparently  late  fables,  but  that  they  were  (partly 
at  least)  known  and  alluded  to  by  Thucydides.  3 

§  80.  The  "Epya  of  Hesiod,  as  it  seems  to  have  been  once 
called,  without  the  addition  of  vpepai,  comprises  ethics  and 
husbandry  in  about  equal  portions,  including  husbandry  under 
what  the  Greeks  called  (Economics ;  it  directs  the  choice  of 
a  wife,  the  management  of  the  house,  and  the  observation  of 

o\j3ios  OVTOS  avrjo  fts  (f^bv  S6fj.ov  d/i</>(7ro\ei5ei 
'H(n'o5os,  Movcrjjtrj  TfTi/JLfvos  aOavaTTifff 
TOV  Sr;  TOI  K\€OS  eo~Tai  'offov  T"  firiiciSvaTai  'Hdis. 
a\\a  Albs  Tre(f>v\a^o  Ne/xefou  Kti\\ifj.ot>  &\o~os' 
KfWi  Se  TOI  Qa.va.Toio  TtKos  TreirpcojueVoi'  fffTiv. 

*  The  age  and  character  of  these  legends  has  been  carefully  discussed 
by  F.  Nietzsche  in  his  second  article  on  the  ay<ai>  (Rhcin.  Mus.  vol.  xxvi.), 
but  without  any  important  positive  result,  except  that  of  sustaining  the 
ayd/v  against  the  Convivium  (of  Plutarch  ?)  where  they  differ. 

3  iii.  96.  He  says  of  Demosthenes,  av\iffa.u.evos  5e  T$  en-par^  tv  TOV 
Aibs  TOV  tie/j.elov  T$  itpf,  tv  $  'HffloSos  o  TTOJTJTTJS  Aeyercu  virb  Ttav  TOVTJJ 
airoQavetv,  xpTjo-flej/  avTtf  ev  Ne^e'ct  TOVTO  iraQetv.  Pausanias  also  mentions 
that  it  was  doubted  in  his  day  whether  Hesiod  was  falsely  accused  of  the 
crime  or  not.  Aristotle  is  referred  to  in  his  iro\.  'Op%.  (Miiller,  FHG.ii. 
p.  144)  as  stating  (though  perhaps  only  as  a  tradition)  that  Stesichorus  was 
his  son  by  Clymene — a  legend  which  certainty  brings  the  date  of  Hesiod 
near  the  very  time  for  which  I  contend. 

5* 


io6  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

ordinary  morality  and  superstition.  The  first  ten  lines  of 
the  exordium  were  rejected  even  by  the  ancients.1  The 
address  to  the  Princes  about  their  injustice  (248-73)  is  the 
only  part  of  the  poem  which  could  possibly  be  classed  under 
the  head  of  politics,  and  I  think  improperly ;  it  is  strictly 
ethical,  but  not  addressed,  like  the  rest,  to  Perses.  The 
ceconomics,  on  the  choice  of  a  wife  (695-705),  are  trifling  com- 
pared to  the  advices  on  husbandry  (383-617),  from  which  the 
whole  poem  took  its  name.  Then  follow  advices  on  coast- 
trading  (618-94),  and  a  calendar  of  lucky  and  unlucky  days 
(v.  765  to  the  end).  In  addition  to  these  principal  parts,  there 
are  three  remarkable  episodes — that  of  Pandora  (47-105) ;  that 
which  immediately  follows,  on  the  Five  (or  Four?)  Ages  of 
Man  j  and,  lastly,  the  picturesque  description  of  winter  (524- 
58),  which  many  of  the  Germans  consider  a  very  late  and 
Ionic  addition  to  the  grave  soberness  of  the  Works,  breathing 
a  spirit  of  levity  and  of  display.  In  these  three  episodes, 
Perses  is  not  addressed,  nor  is  he  mentioned  in  the  calendar. 
This  latter  portion,  especially,  which  consists  of  brief,  discon- 
nected sentences,  shows  evidence  of  much  interpolation,  though 
it  is  impossible  to  expose  it.  As  to  the  larger  episodes  opinions 
vary  considerably,  each  of  them  being  attacked  and  defended 
by  able  scholars.  The  proverbial  character  of  the  whole  com- 
position is  clear  from  (a)  its  many  short  and  disconnected 
sentences,  which  are  in  one  passage  (vv.  300,  sq.)  only  strung 
together  because  of  the  recurrence  in  them  of  the  root  ipy  in 
various  forms.2  This  attention  to  sound  has  been  shown  to 
exist  all  through  the  Hesiodic  poems  by  Gottling,  in  the  form 
of  (/3)  alliteration.  Many  of  the  successive  advices  are,  further- 
more, plainly  (y)  inconsistent,  as  is  always  the  case  with  pro- 
verbial collections  of  wisdom. 

On  my  theory,  this  question  of  genuineness  will  assume  a 
somewhat  different  form.   The  Hesiod  of  the  seventh  century — 

1  The  strictly  ethical  parts  are  w.  1 1-46,  202-47,  274-382,  708-64.     I 
quote  from  the  text  of  Gottling,  who  also  gives  this  analysis. 

2  The  same  peculiarity  is  to  be  observed,  however,  without  any  such 
cause,  or  without  the  word  being  of  much  importance,  in  the  Homeric  Hymn 
to  Aphrodite  (6-16).     Cf.  Gottling' s  Preface,  p.  33. 


CH.  vir.  THE  'WORKS  AND  DAYS?  107 

bringing  together  older  materials,  loosely  and  without  strict  lo- 
gical nexus — would  not  be  very  nice  in  selecting  fragments  of 
precisely  the  same  age  and  character ;  he  would  naturally  adorn 
the  dry  and  sour  apophthegms  of  the  Boeotian  farmers  with  epi- 
sodes of  semi-ethical,  semi-mythological  import.  The  descrip- 
tion of  winter  is  most  likely  his  own,  and  a  most  natural  descrip- 
tion for  any  man  who  remembered,  or  had  heard  of,  the  splendid 
climate  of  Asia  Minor,  and  who  suffered  from  the  severity  of 
his  adopted  home.  But  the  search  after  special  interpolations 
is  rather  a  matter  of  caprice,  and  of  ingenuity,  than  of  literary 
history  ;  and  I  therefore  refer  the  reader  to  the  special  tracts 
on  the  subject.1 

§  8 1.  The  general  character  of  the  Works  is  that  of  a 
shrewd  and  somewhat  mean  society,  where  private  interest  is  the 
paramount  object,  and  the  ultimate  test  of  morals  ;  but  where 
the  poor  and  undefended  man  sees  plainly  that  religion 
and  justice,  however  in  themselves  respectable,  are  of  value 
as  affording  his  only  chance  of  safety.  The  attainment  of 
comfort,  or  of  wealth,  seems  the  only  object  in  view — the 
distrust  of  kinsmen  and  friends  seems  widely  spread — the 
whole  of  the  social  scheme  seems  awry,  and  in  a  decaying 
condition.  All  the  faults  of  the  Greek  character,  which  come 
out  so  strongly  in  after  history,  are  there,  and  even  obtrusive. 
The  picture  of  the  Iron  Age  (w.  180,  sq.)  contains  every  one 
of  the  features  so  striking  in  Thucydides'  famous  picture  (iii. 
82)  of  the  fourth  century  Greeks.  Nevertheless,  the  poet 
strongly  asserts  the  moral  government  of  the  world,  and  his 
Zeus  is  an  All-wise  and  All-knowing  Ruler,  far  removed  from 
the  foibles  and  the  passions  of  the  Homeric  type.  While  he 
mentions  the  usual  evils  of  poverty — mendicancy  and  nightly 
thieving — it  is  remarkable  that  he  never  alludes  practi- 
cally to  the  horrors  of  war,  or  the  risk  of  slavery,  from  either 

1  Viz.  :— A.  Twesten,  Comm.  Crit.  de  O.  et  D.  (Kil.,  1815). 

F.  Thiersch,  De  Gnom.  Carm.  Grac.   (Abh.  Bair.  Akad.  iii.  p.  391). 

C.  Lehrs,    Qttestiones  Epiae  (Konigsberg,  1837). 

T.  L.  Heyer,  De  Hes.  O.  et  D.  (Schwerin,  1848). 

J.  Hetzel.  DeCarm.  Hes.  Disp.  (Weilburg,  1860). 

A.  Steitz,  Die  Werke,   ore.,  des  Hesiodos  (Leipzig,  1869). 


to8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.VIT. 

this  cause  or  from  piracy.  It  is,  indeed,  doubtful  whether  any 
of  the  farm-servants  mentioned  are  slaves,  and  not  rather  hired 
labourers,  working  for  the  owner  of  a  freehold  farm.1 

The  poetical  merit  of  the  work  has  generally  been  under- 
estimated, owing  to  a  tacit  comparison  with  Homer.  In  the  epi- 
sodes on  the  Ages  of  Man,  and  the  description  of  winter,  there 
is  much  fine  and  vigorous  painting,  and  even  in  the  homely 
parts  there  are  quaint  and  happy  thoughts,  expressed  in  terse 
and  suitable  words.  I  would  specially  point  to  the  picture  (v. 
448)  of  the  farmer  hearing  the  annual  scream  of  the  crane  in 
the  clouds,  and  feeling  a  pang  at  his  heart  if  he  has  no  oxen  to 
begin  his  ploughing.2 

There  is  no  advice  upon  wheat  -growing,  and  little  on  vine- 
yards, though  the  making  of  wine  is  assumed  as  an  ordinary 
thing  among  the  Boeotian  farmers  (vv.  611-4)  ;  nor  is  there  a 
word  about  horses,  which  were  kept  only  by  the  nobles.  The 

1  I  have  no  doubt  about  the  meaning  of  the  disputed  lines  (600,  sq.  )  : 

avrap  «rV  5); 

irdvTa.  ftiov  Karddrjai  £irdpfj.evoi>  HvSoOi  oucou, 
T  &OIKOV  iroteiffBai,  Kal  &r«KVov  tpi8ov 
\ne6itopTis  tpiBos. 


Most  of  the  Germans  translate,  '  Procure  a  day-labourer  who  has  no  house 
[and  family],'  and  as  they  cannot  see  why  such  a  servant  should  be  sought 
when  the  main  work  is  over,  they  proceed  to  strike  out  the  lines,  or  transfer 
them  elsewhere.  This  seems  to  me  a  good  instance  of  rash  scepticism. 
Hesiod  throughout  supposes  that  the  farmer  has  one  or  more  farm-servants 
(cf.  vv.  441,  503,  608).  There  is  always  work  to  be  done,  as  appears 
from  the  succeeding  verses.  The  line  must,  therefore,  be  taken  strictly  with 
the  preceding,  and  rendered,  '  When  you  have  brought  all  your  stores  into 
the  house,  you  must  turn  your  man-servant  out  of  it,  and  look  out  for  a 
woman  servant  (who  still  sleeps  within)  who  has  no  child  to  feed.'  The 
repetition  of  oT*cos,  which  here  means  barn,  is  quite  conclusive,  and  so  is  the 
different  verb  used  for  the  change  of  residence  in  one  servant,  and  the  pro- 
curing of  another.  This  proceeding  is,  furthermore,  recommended  at  the 
beginning  of  the  hot  -weather,  when  sleeping  in  the  open  air,  or  under  any 
natural  shelter,  is  in  the  climate  of  Greece  no  hardship,  and  not  unusual. 

2  The  terms  Qeptoiitos,  ^uepd/coiros,  ireVro£os,  a»6ffTfos,  are  noted  by  the 
commentators,  with  a  few  similar  formations  in  ^Eschylus,  as  evidences  of 
what  they  consider  an  oracular  or  religious  style. 


CH.vif.   AUTHORSHIP  OF  THE  <•  THEOGONY?  109 

absence  of  all  advice  on  manuring  struck  even  the  Romans,1  and 
can  hardly  be  explained  by  the  causes  which  permit  the  same 
omission  in  the  present  farming  of  Boeotia,  where  the  popula- 
tion is  so  sparse  that  the  land  is  not  occupied,  and  the  hus- 
bandman can  shift  his  crop  yearly  to  a  piece  of  ground  which 
has  lain  fallow  the  previous  season.  Such  a  state  of  things 
could  hardly  have  escaped  mention  through  so  many  details 
as  we  find  in  the  Works. 

§  82.  The  Theogony,  also  called  the  Genealogy  of  Hesiod, 
and  really  an  abstract  of  cosmogony,  was  acknowledged  by 
all  antiquity,  including  Heracleitus  and  Plato,  as  the  work 
of  Hesiod,  until  it  was  called  in  question  by  Pausanias,  who 
states  that  the  Boeotians  about  Helicon  admitted  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  Works  only,  excluding  the  preface.  He  himself,  in 
various  places,  adopts  this  opinion  as  his  own,  but  his  reasons, 
or  those  of  his  authorities,  are  nowhere  given.  It  seems  very 
remarkable  (as  Gottling  notes),  that  in  the  list  of  Greek  rivers 
no  mention  is  made  of  any  Boeotian  rivers,  even  of  the  Cephis- 
sus,  which  is  an  important  stream,  and  which  was  mentioned 
repeatedly  in  other  poems  attributed  to  Hesiod.2  Thus  the 
special  legends  of  Boeotia  would  seem  strangely  neglected  by 
its  national  poet. 

A  careful  comparison  of  the  two  poems  will,  however, 
incline  us,  if  we  abandon  the  preface  of  the  Theogony,  along 
with  that  of  the  Works,  to  pronounce  both  poems  the  work  of 
the  same  author.  The  subjects  are  so  diverse  that  constant 
similarities  are  hardly  to  be  expected.  Nevertheless,  Steitz 
has  carefully  collected 3  so  many  natural  and  undesigned  like- 
nesses in  expression,  as  almost  to  persuade  himself,  in  spite 
of  his  very  sceptical  turn  of  mind.  There  are,  in  addition, 
whole  passages  of  still  stronger  resemblance.  The  story  of 
Prometheus  and  Pandora  is  told  in  both  poems,  but  with 
such  variations  that  it  is  not  possible  to  determine  which  is 
the  original,  so  that  we  must  regard  them  as  independent 
copies  of  an  older  account.  There  is  added  in  the  Theogony 

1  In  Xenophon's  (Economictts  this  essential  point  is  duly  discussed. 

2  Cf.  w.  343,  sqq.  ;  fragg.  201-3,  Gott. 

3  Op.  cit.  pp.  37,  sq. 


i io  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  VII. 

a  satirical  picture  of  the  female  sex,  which  is  exactly  in  the  tone 
and  spirit  of  the  Works.  Both  poems  further  agree  in  their 
piecemeal  character,  and  seem  to  be  the  production  of  the 
same  sort  of  poet — a  man  of  considerable  taste  for  collecting 
what  was  old  and  picturesque,  but  without  any  genius  for  com- 
posing from  his  materials  a  large  and  uniform  plan. 

These  general  features,  when  corroborated  by  the  tradition 
of  the  Greeks  so  far  back  as  Heracleitus,  seem  to  me  stronger 
than  the  objections  brought  by  modern  critics  from  contrasts 
rather  in  subject  than  in  style. 

There  seems,  in  fact,  an  argument  in  favour  of  unity  of 
authorship  from  the  very  contrast  of  subject.  The  Works,  a 
purely  ethical  and  practical  poem,  intentionally  avoids  theology, 
and  treats  of  the  Deity  in  the  vaguest  and  broadest  sense,  as  a 
single  consistent  power,  ruling  the  world  with  justice.  The 
loves  and  foibles  of  the  gods,  as  portrayed  in  Homer  and  the 
Hymns,  are  evidently  distasteful  to  the  poet,  and  opposed  to 
his  notions  of  pure  and  practical  ethics.  In  his  second  poem, 
on  the  contrary,  he  goes  at  length  and  in  detail  into  the  wars, 
alliances,  and  other  relations  of  the  gods,  but  distinctly  in  the 
sense  of  a  cosmogony,  not  as  the  prototype  of  a  human  society. 
The  violences  which  Homer  attributed  to  the  gods,  as  beings 
of  like  passions  with  men,  are  felt  vaguely  but  strongly  by 
the  poet  of  the  Theogony  to  be  great  convulsions  of  physical 
nature — such  as  the  early  eruption  of  ^Etna,  which  he  pictures 
under  the  form  of  the  revolt  of  Typhceus  against  Zeus  (vv.  820, 
sq.).  We  can  conceive  him  then  composing  the  Theogony 
as  a  sort  of  supplement  to  the  Works ;  but  a  supplement 
already  showing  the  changing  attitude  of  Greek  religion,  by 
which  it  was  ultimately  dissociated  from  ethics,  and  gradually 
reduced  to  a  mere  collection  of  dogmas  and  of  ritual. 

§  83.  The  poem  begins  with  115  lines  of  invocations  to  the 
Muses,  which  are  not  well  put  together,  and  show  clear  traces 
of  being  a  cento  from  various  older  Prooemia,  or  introductory 
Hymns,  but  which  contain  many  passages  of  considerable 
beauty.  The  personal  passage  about  Hesiod  himself  (w. 
22-35)  has  been  very  generally  suspected  by  the  critics,  but 
assuredly  represents  a  very  old  traditidh,  that  he  was  a  shepherd 


CH.  VII.  THE  'THEOGONY:  in 

on  the  slopes  of  Helicon.  The  Boeotian  Muses  here  distinctly 
contrast  the  lying  epics  of  the  Ionic  bards  with  the  sober  truth 
of  the  school  of  Helicon  (26-7).  There  is  a  very  interest- 
ing panegyric  on  Calliope  (79-93),  in  which  the  eloquence 
which  she  bestows  on  princes  is  specially  brought  out  as  a 
great  power  in  politics  and  lawsuits.  If  there  were  any  allusion 
to  the  Muses  as  three  (not  as  nine),  I  should  be  more  ready  to 
agree  with  the  German  critics  who  regard  these  fragments  of 
Hymns  as  very  old  Boeotian  poetry. 

After  this  introduction  the  poet  approaches  the  genealogies 
of  the  gods,  from  primeval  chaos  downward  till  we  come  to 
demigods  and  heroes.  The  subject  is  very  dry,  and  the  crowds 
of  names  make  the  poem  spiritless  and  dull  as  a  whole,  but 
there  are  frequent  passages  of  strange  power  and  beauty 
scattered  everywhere  through  it.  The  famous  passage  de- 
scribing the  Styx  shows  the  poet  to  have  known  and  appreci- 
ated the  wild  scenery  of  the  river  Styx  in  Arcadia.1  The 
description  of  Sleep  and  Death  which  immediately  precedes 
is  likewise  of  great  beauty.  The  conflict  of  the  gods,  and 
Titans  (655,  sq.)  has  a  splendid  crash  and  thunder  about  it, 
and  is  far  superior  in  conception,  though  inferior  in  execution, 
to  the  battle  of  the  gods  in  the  Iliad.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  struggle  between  Zeus  and  Typhoeus.  At  the  end 
of  the  legend  of  Pandora  a  satirical  description  of  the  female 
sex  is  foisted  in,  which  differs  widely  in  character  from  the  sub- 
ject of  the  poem,  and  is  closely  allied  to  the  extant  fragments 
of  Simonides  of  Amorgos,  and  his  school.  This  passage,  if 
genuine,  would  show  how  the  poet  ill  concealed  a  shrewd  and 
bitter  temper,  in  performing  what  may  have  been  an  ungrateful 
task,  and  how  the  age  of  iambic  satire,  and  of  reflective  elegy, 
had  already  commenced.2  Some  parts  of  the  conclusion  have 
been  tampered  with,  especially  where  Latinus  and  the  Tyrrhe- 
nians are  mentioned,  for  though  Strabo  holds  that  Hesiod 
knew  Sicily,  which  supports  the  theory  that  he  lived  after  the 
settlement  of  that  island  by  the  Greeks  about  700  B.C.,  it  is 

1  VV'  775,  S1-    This  M.  E.  Burnouf,  a  most  competent  observer,  testi- 
fies (Lit.  grecque,  i.  p.  131). 

2  vv.  590,  sq.     There  are  foretastes  of  this  in  the  Works,  vv.  701,  sq. 


ii2  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  vn. 

absurd  to  foist  upon  him  any  statement  about  the  descent  of 
Latinus  from  Ithacan  parentage. 

§  84.  Very  little  need  here  be  said  of  the  remaining  poem 
of  480  lines,  attributed  to  Hesiod,  the  so-called  Shield  of 
Heracles.  It  begins  with  an  account  of  the  birth  of  Heracles 
and  Iphitus,  then  passes  to  the  conflict  of  Heracles  and  Iphitus 
with  Ares,  and  an  elaborate  description  of  the  shield,  from 
which  the  poem  takes  its  name.  It  will  be  observed  that 
the  hero  Heracles  is  not  yet  described  as  armed  with  a  mere 
club  and  lion's  skin,  but  wears  the  same  panoply  as  his 
fellows.  The  poem  was  probably  intended  for  recitation  at  a 
contest,  and  seems  to  be  one  of  the  latest  of  the  productions  of 
the  epic  age.  Its  genuineness  was  doubted  by  the  Alexandrian 
critics,  especially  Aristophanes,  and  by  Longinus,  and  they 
noted  that  the  first  fifty- six  lines,  which  begin  abruptly  with 
11  ot»/,  were  to  be  found  in  the  fourth  book  of  the  JZoite,  or 
Catalogue  of  famous  women  (attributed  to  Hesiod),  where  they 
would  naturally  appear  in  the  history  of  Alcmena.  But  the 
third  preface  or  viroOtcng,  after  stating  these  facts,  adds  that 
Megacles  (probably  Megacleides),  the  Athenian,  while  censur- 
ing the  merit  of  the  poem,  knew  it  to  be  genuine.  It  says  that 
Apollonius  Rhodius  supported  it  on  internal  evidence,  as  of 
the  same  authorship  with  the  Catalogue,  and  lastly  that 
Stesichorus  ascribes  it  to  Hesiod.  This  last  authority  would  be 
decisive,  did  we  not  suspect  the  writer  of  the  preface  of  haste 
or  inaccuracy.1 

It  has  been  clearly  shown  by  O.  Miiller,  that  while  the 
shield  of  Achilles  in  IL  S  is  a  mere  fancy  picture,  the  shield  of 
Heracles  is  described  from  actual  observations  of  plastic  produc- 
tions, and  even  of  favourite  subjects  which  are  still  extant  on 
vases.  While  this  must  lower  the  date  of  the  poem,  it  in- 

1  Gottling,  who  divides  the  poem  into  three  distinct  parts — the  oldest, 
taken  from  the  Catalogue  of  Women,  vv.  1-56;  the  second,  also  old,  57- 
140  and  317-480;  and,  lastly,  the  far  later  description  of  the  Shield, 
141-317 — thinks  that  Stesichorus  may  have  quoted  (in  his  Cycnus)  from  the 
second  part  as  a  work  of  Hesiod's,  and  that  some  of  it  may  really  be  such. 
This  would  not  establish  the  present  poem  to  be  genuine,  but  would  admit 
in  it  old  fragments  of  the  real  Hesiod — a  most  reasonable  hypothesis. 


CH.  Vii.  FRAGMENTS  OF  HE S TOD.  113 

creases  our  sense  of  the  inferiority  of  the  imitator,  who  could 
not,  with  Homer  and  with  actual  plastic  reliefs  before  him, 
imagine  a  more  harmonious  piece  of  work.  Almost  all  the 
perfections  of  the  grouping  in  the  Iliad  are  lost,  and  the  terrible 
and  weird  are  substituted  for  the  exciting  and  picturesque  in 
Homer.  Had  we  lost  the  Iliad,  we  should  doubtless  admire 
many  of  its  features  in  the  copy,  but  fortunately  we  are  not  re- 
duced to  this  extremity.  One  passage  about  the  tettix,  though 
not  very  apposite,  has  great  merit. ' 

It  should  be  added,  as  regards  its  ascription  to  Hesiod, 
that  it  resembles  both  the  Works  and  Theogony  in  a  great 
many  expressions  and  phrases,  which  are  collected  by  Steitz  in 
the  work  above  cited.  It  seems  therefore,  that  with  the  hint 
concerning  Stesichorus  before  us,  we  must  concede  to  such 
conservative  critics  as  choose  to  assert  its  authenticity,  that 
their  case  is  not  hopeless. 

§  85.  We  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  extant  fragments  of 
other  works  attributed  to  Hesiod. 

Of  these  Gaisford  and  Dindorf  collected  a  great  many,  and 
by  the  labours  of  Marckscheffel,  Gottling,  Lehmann,  and  Her- 
mann, the  number  has  been  raised  to  above  200,  if  we  include 
mere  allusions  in  scholia  and  commentators.  As  literature, 
they  have  to  us  no  value,  and  will  never  be  read,  as  the  frag- 
ments of  the  tragic  poets  may  be,  for  their  own  sake.  Their 
general  character  is  quite  Hesiodic,  that  is  to  say,  they  treat  of 
lists  of  gods  and  heroes  in  a  partly  genealogical,  partly  epical, 
way.  They  contain  a  perfect  mine  of  mythological  lore,  and 
give  the  legends  and  stories  of  peoples  far  beyond  the  range  of 
the  ordinary  Hellenic  world,  so  that  their  composition,  gene- 
rally speaking,  cannot  fall  before  the  epoch  of  extended  Greek 
colonisation.  Though  it  is  false  that  Homer  and  Hesiod 
made  the  religion  of  the  Greeks,  in  the  sense  of  establishing 

1  w.  393-9 : 

?lfi.os  8e  xAoep<£  Kvav6irrepos  faera  Te'rrif 
ijfo  f<pe£6(j.evos,  Bepos  avOpdicoHriv  atiStiv 
&pXfrat,  if  re  iritra  Ka.1  &pv<ris  6r)\vs  ee'pirr;, 
K<U  re  iravtjfji.fpi6s  re  ical  r](fos  x€/et  avS^v 


114  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

gods  and  cults,  or  in  altering  any  old  local  worships,  it  seems 
that  Hesiod  especially  did  give  to  the  later  literary  Greeks  a 
Summa  Theologies,  to  which  they  referred  for  the  origin  and 
relationships  of  gods  and  heroes. 

This  is  especially  true  of  ( i )  the  Catalogue,  in  three  books, 
to  which  was  joined  the  Great  Eoiai  (»*/  on/),  or  Catalogue 
of  Women,  in  two  more  books,  generally  quoted  as  an  inde- 
pendent work.1  The  Catalogue  was  a  sort  of  Greek  Peerage, 
and  gave  the  family  trees  and  relationships  of  the  principal 
Greek  heroes,  so  showing  the  parentage  of  the  ^Eolic  and  Doric 
nobility.  We  have  a  fair  idea  of  the  fourth  book  from  the 
fragment  preserved  at  the  opening  of  the  Shield  of  Heracles. 
The  date  of  the  Eoiai  cannot  be  determined  more  accurately 
than  by  the  allusions  quoted  from  it  (a)  to  the  nymph  Cyrene, 
probably,  therefore,  after  the  founding  of  that  colony ;  that  of 
the  Catalogue  by  allusions  (/3)  to  the  Sicilian  Ortygia,  and  (y) 
to  the  fable  of  lo,  which  Kirchhoff  thinks  to  have  come  into 
vogue  about  Ol.  30.  But  all  these  inferences  are  very  uncertain. 
(2)  The  AlylfjLtos  attributed  by  most  people  to  Hesiod,  but  by 
some  to  Cercops  the  Milesian,  was  a  poem  on  the  war  of 
./Egimius,  King  of  the  Dorians,  with  Heracles  as  his  ally, 
against  the  Lapithae.  It  seems  to  have  been  mainly  intended 
to  bring  the  Doric  conquerors  of  the  Peloponnesus  into  rela- 
tion with  Heracles,  through  their  chiefs,  who  boasted  of  their 
descent  from  him.  (3)  The  K?'/v«>e  yo/uoewas  also  a  poem  in- 
troducing Heracles  as  a  leading  character,  and  celebrating  his 
exploits.  (4)  The  MeXa/zTroSm  was  about  Melampus,  Teiresias, 
Calchas,  and  other  famous  prophet-priests,  and  may  have  con- 
tained some  account  of  the  history  of  prophecy. 

§  86.  It  was  evidently  owing  to  this  poem  that  its  supposed 
author,  Hesiod,  was  considered  the  forerunner  of  the  Orphic 
mystical  school.  Of  his  successors  in  this  direction  we  have, 
besides  Orpheus,  Eumolpus,  Musseus,  and  Epimenides,  but  to 
us  these  are  mere  names.  In  the  genealogical  and  mythological 
direction,  we  have,  similarly,  the  Laconian  Kinsethon,  Asius, 
Chersias  of  Orchomenus,  the  Corinthian  Eumelus  (KojO/vfltcu-u), 

1  In  Locris,  the  probable  home  of  this  poem,  the  importance  of  female 
ancestry  (the  primitive  Mutterrechf)  long  survived.  Cf.  Bergk,  L G.  i.  p.  1002. 


CH.  vii.  HESIOD  AND  ARCHILOCHUS,  115 

the  anonymous  authors  of  the  NavTrtk-rta  E'TTJ/,  'ApyoXik-a,  and 
the  4>opa»'i'c,  and  others  who  were  not  apparently  in  any  con- 
tact with  the  Ionic  epic,  but  Hesiodic  in  character. 

The  'Api^uoTran  by  Aristeas  of  Proconnesus  was,  on  the 
contrary,  a  collection  of  fantastic  fables  about  nations  and 
countries  beyond  the  knowledge,  but  within  the  rumour  and 
the  imagination,  of  the  early  Ionic  adventurers  into  strange 
seas  and  coasts.  There  was,  indeed,  a  supposed  journey  round 
the  world,  or  yj/e  Trtpio^oc,  ascribed  to  Hesiod,  but  probably  of 
later  origin.1  A  few  lines  are  also  preserved  of  the  Xe/pwi'oe 
vTToOi'iKai,  a  set  of  moral  instructions  supposed  to  be  given  by 
Cheiron  to  Achilles,  and  which  Quintilian  says  were  thought  He- 
siod's  till  pronounced  spurious  by  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium.2 

§  87.  It  remains  to  give  a  short  sketch  of  the  external  his- 
tory of  the  Hesiodic  poems  through  antiquity,  and  down  to 
our  own  day.  It  is  very  hard  to  say  whether  the  strong  family 
likeness  in  Archilochus  to  Hesiod  arises  from  a  similarity 
in  tone  and  style,  or  from  direct  contact.  The  extant  frag- 
ments are  not  sufficient  to  prove  the  latter,  which  would  throw 
back  Hesiod  to  an  earlier  date  than  I  am  disposed  to  accord 
him.  But  if  he  were  an  earlier  contemporary,  and  living  in  a 
parallel  state  of  things,  general  similarities  might  be  expected. 
Archilochus  told  beast  fables  like  that  in  Hesiod.  He  unjustly 
reviles  3  the  climate  of  Thasos  and  its  barrenness,  in  contrast 
to  the  valley  of  the  Siris,  just  as  Hesiod  censures  the  rich 
Boeotia,  as  compared  with  Kyme.  But  there  is  no  proof  of 
borrowing.  The  same  may  be  said  as  regards  Simonides  of 
Amorgos,  whom  the  critics  place,  doubtfully,  in  the  middle  of 

1  It  is  cited  by  Strabo,  vii.  p.  302,  and  there  is  also  an  astronomy, 
cited  by  Plutarch  and  Pliny. 

2  Of  all  these  fragments  there  are  several  collections,  of  which  those  by 
Dlintzer  (Koln,  1840-41),  by  Marckscheffel  (Lips.  1840,  which  also  con- 
tains the  fragments  of  the  other  authors  above  alluded  to),  by  Gb'ttling  (ap- 
pendix to  his  Hesiod,  ed.   2,  Gotha,  1843),   and  by  F.   S.  Lehrs  (in  the 
Didot  Corpus  Epicorum,  Paris,  1862),  are  all  to  be  recommended,  the  last 
being,  of  course,  the  fullest  and  best.    .The  old  lists  of  the  works  ascribed 
to  Hesiod  are  found  in  Pausanias,  ix.  31,  5,  and  in  Suidas,  art.  ' 

they  contain  a  few  additional  titles  to  those  I  have  mentioned. 

3  Cf.  above,  p.  97,  note. 


Ii6  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VTI. 

the  seventh  century  B.C.,  and  contemporary  with  Archilochus. 
Here,  again,  there  are  strong  family  likenesses  to  the  Works; 
but  the  only  passage  (in  the  Theogony)  which  could  be  sup- 
posed the  direct  model  of  Simonides'  satire  on  women  is  de- 
cidedly an  interpolation  in  Hesiod,  and  its  use  of  the  bee  (in 
an  opposed  sense  to  that  of  Simonides)  for  the  working  men, 
with  drones  for  the  women,  seems  to  me  plainly  a  satiric  cor- 
rection of  Simonides,  and  composed  after  his  famous  poem. 

We  know  nothing  whatever  of  Kerkops,  who  is  mentioned 
as  Hesiod's  earliest  follower  and  rival,  nor  is  there  any  real 
evidence  of  Terpander  having  been  such.  In  the  extant  lyric 
and  elegiac  fragments  no  certain  trace  appears  till  Alcaeus, 
whose  frag.  39  is  a  most  distinct  copy  of  Hesiod.  So  likewise 
the  resemblances  in  Theognis  are  far  more  than  general,  and  it 
seems  undeniable  that  in  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  the 
poems  of  Hesiod — at  least  the  Works — were  well  known  and 
circulated. 

Acusilaus  is  mentioned  by  Plato,  Josephus,  and  a  schol.  on 
Apollonius  Rhodius,  as  a  commentator  or  prose  paraphrast 
of  the  Tfieogony.  Bernhardy  supposes  him  to  have  been  a 
Peloponnesian  theologian,  who  collected  genealogies  and  cos- 
mogonies, and  arranged  them  after  the  manner  of  Hesiod,  but 
in  prose.  But  we  are  left  quite  in  the  dark  by  our  authorities 
concerning  him. 

Most  critics  refer  to  the  same  epoch  an  old  poem  on 
the  Contest  and  the  Origin  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  which  is 
largely  quoted  in  the  extant  tract  of  that  title.1  This  poem 
seems,  at  any  rate,  to  have  originated  in  those  days  when  the 
gnomic  and  sententious  Boeotian  school  had  obtained  a  greater 
popularity  than  its  Ionic  rival.  The  scene  is  laid  at  the  con- 
test of  Chalcis,  and  the  author  aims  at  proving  that,  although 
Hesiod  was  declared  victor,  Homer  was  far  the  greater  poet — a 
needless  task.  But,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  the  very  existence 
of  such  a  poem  is  denied  by  the  most  recent  critic,  Nietzsche. 

Shortly  before  and  after  the  times  of  the  Persian  wars, 

1  Printed  at  the  end  of  Gottling's  and  Lehrs'  editions  of  Hesiod  ;  and 
more  recently,  with  great  critical  care,  in  the  Ada  Soc.  Phil,  of  Leipzig, 
vol.  i.  pp.  I,  sq.,  by  F.  Nietzsche. 


CH.  VII.       HESIOD  IN  THE  ATTIC  PERIOD.  117 

Xenophanes,  and  then  Heracleitus,  attack  him — the  first  for 
his  immoral  teaching,  along  with  Homer,  about  the  doings  of 
the  gods  (Theogony  and  Catalogue") ;  the  second  for  idle  learn- 
ing on  the  same  profitless  subject 

It  seems  that  he  was  subjected  to  some  critical  revi- 
sion, about  this  time,  by  the  commission  of  Peisistratus,  for 
Plutarch  (Theseus,  c.  20)  mentions  a  verse  which  was  then  re- 
moved. Whether  the  poems  had  been  hitherto  preserved  by  a 
school  of  Hesiodic  rhapsodists,  is  not  sufficiently  clear.  It 
is  certain,  however,  that  they  were  recited  at  poetical  con- 
tests, and  in  early  days  without  musical  accompaniment,  for 
Pausanias1  criticises  a  statue  of  Hesiod  with  a  lyre  on  his  knees 
as  absurd,  seeing  that  he  sang  with  a  bay  branch  in  his  hand. 
This  was  in  contrast  to  the  Ionic  rhapsodising.2  These  op- 
posed methods  were  not  strictly  adhered  to  in  after  times, 
and  were  even  occasionally  reversed. 

But  in  Attic  days  Hesiod  attained  a  widespread  popularity 
as  an  author  of  moral  instruction  for  the  use  of  schoolmasters 
and  parents.  The  Greeks,  indeed,  always  regarded  the  Works 
as  an  ethical  treatise,  while  the  Romans  laid  more  stress 
on  its  agricultural  side.  Plato  constantly  alludes  to  Hesiod, 
and  quotes  him,  not  very  accurately,  as  an  authority  in  morals 
and  in  theology.  He  is  similarly  cited  by  Xenophon.  So 
thoroughly  was  this  recognised  that  the  comic  writers  brought 
him  on  the  stage  as  the  ideal  of  an  old-fashioned  schoolmaster, 
full  of  cut-and-dry  moral  advices.  The  philosophers  who  suc- 
ceeded Plato,  especially  the  Stoics  Zeno  and  Chrysippus,  made 
him  the  subject  of  criticism ;  and  Epicurus  is  said  to  have  got 
his  first  impulse  towards  philosophy  from  reading  the  Theogony. 
The  same  story  is  told  of  Manilius,  the  Roman  poet 

1  ix.  30,  2  :  e'irl  £a/85ou  batpvys  jjSe*'. 

2  Pausanias   (x.  7,  6)  tells  us  a  story,  that    Hesiod  was  excluded  from 
contending  at  the  Pythian  games,  because  he  had  not  been  taught  to  play 
the  lyre  along  with  his  singing.     But  when  he  adds  that  Homer  also  was 
unsuccessful,  because  his  training  in  the  art  could  not  be  perfected  owing 
to  his  want  of  sight,  he  seems  to  repeat  the  stories  of  the  time  when  the 
richer  and  more  elaborate  lyric  poetry  came  to  look  upon  the  old  epic 
recitation  as  bald  and  poor. 


Ii8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  VII. 

Philologically,  the  works  of  Hesiod  excited  the  same  sort  of 
interest  as  those  of  the  Ionic  epic  poets,  but  in  a  lesser  degree. 
We  still  have  scanty  traces  of  the  critical  notices  of  Zenodotus, 
.Aristophanes,  and  Aristarchus ;  of  Apollonius  Rhodius,  of 
Crates,  and  of  Didymus ;  in  fact,  of  almost  all  those  whose 
names  are  found  in  the  Homeric  scholia.  But  Plutarch,  as  a 
Boeotian,  wrote  a  special  treatise  in  four  books  on  Hesiod, 
which  the  remaining  fragments  show  to  have  been  both  critical 
and  explanatory,  with  discussions  of  an  antiquarian  and  patriotic 
character,  defending  the  poet  against  objectors.  His  work  was 
the  main  source  of  the  commentary  of  Proclus,  who  again  was 
copied  servilely  by  Tzetzes.  The  later  commentary  of  Manuel 
Moschopulos  is  still  extant,  and  completely  printed  in  the 
Venice  ed.  of  1537. 

§  88.  The  prose  tract,  The  Contest  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  is 
the  work  of  some  rhetor  who  mentions  the  Emperor  Hadrian, 
but  its  date  is  not  further  fixed.  It  is  very  full  on  the  legends 
and  parentage  of  both  Homer  and  Hesiod.  The  antiquity  and 
authority  of  the  legends  told  in  this  tract  are  worthy  of  a  moment's 
discussion.  The  version  in  Plutarch's  Convivium  (cap.  x.) 
professes  to  give  Lesches  as  the  authority  for  the  contest,  and 
apparently  Lesches  the  cyclic  poet.  If  this  were  so,  the 
legend  is  old  and  of  good  authority,  and  as  such  is  accepted  by 
Gottling  and  other  editors  of  the  life  of  Hesiod.  But  the  stray 
citation  of  Lesches  in  the  middle  of  the  Plutarchian  narrative 
has  offended  modern  critics,  who  have  either  emended  the 
text,  or  considered  it  a  marginal  gloss  indicating  that  the 
immediately  following  lines  are  to  be  found  in  Lesches'  poem. 
Nietzsche  goes  further,  and  rejects  the  whole  Convivium  as 
spurious  and  not  by  Plutarch  at  all.  This  being  so,  there 
remains  no  older  authority  cited  in  the  dywv  than  the  rhetor 
Alkidamas,  a  well-known  pupil  of  Gorgias,  who  will  be  con- 
sidered hereafter.  This  man  composed  a  treatise  called  7% 
4>wo-£we  Movfftlov,  On  mental  culture,  in  which  he  seems  to  have 
described  the  contest  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  to  show  that 
Homer  was  the  forerunner  of  Gorgias  in  rapid  improvisation 
and  extempore  reply.  Drawing  his  conclusions  from  slight 
and  to  me  insufficient  hints,  Nietzsche  infers  that  the  opening 


CH.  VII.    CONTEST  OF  HOMER  AND  HESIOD.  119 

part  of  Alkidamas'  book  contained  a  much  fuller  account  of  the 
contest  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  from  which  the  author  of  our 
extant  ayuv  abridged  his  narrative,  particularly  by  cutting 
down  the  citations.  When  Nietzsche  further  asserts  that  Alki- 
damas invented  the  whole  story  of  the  Contest,  and  that  to  him 
we  must  refer  all  our  legends  of  it,  he  goes,  I  think,  a  great  deal 
too  far.  The  passage  in  Hesiod's  Works  about  the  contest  at 
Chalcis  is  probably  older  than  Alkidamas,  even  if  interpolated, 
and  I  can  hardly  believe  that  this  alleged  contest  and  rivalry 
between  the  two  great  epic  bards  was  not  thought  of  till  the 
rhetor's  time.  But  it  is  very  likely  that  he  worked  up  the  old 
story  into  a  smart  rhetorical  form,  and  made  it  popular.  So  far 
he  may  have  been  the  chief  source  of  the  Contest  as  we  have  it. 

The  Contest  also  cites  Eratosthenes  the  Alexandrian,  who 
wrote  a  poem  called  'HertoSoe  fl  'ArrtpivvQ  on  the  story  of  the 
poet's  death  ;  but  whether  he  differed  widely  from  Alkidamas, 
and  used  other  legends,  we  cannot  tell.  So  also  Aristotle  is 
said  to  have  mentioned  the  tomb  of  Hesiod  in  his  Polity  of  the, 
Oirhomenians,  but  here  again  we  have  only  a  stray  citation. l 

The  ytfOQ  'Ilcrtd^ov,  generally  printed  as  a  preface  to  his 
works,  is  probably  a  mere  compilation  of  Joh.  Tzetzes,  from 
Proclus,  but  is  very  instructive,  like  the  ayw^,  in  indicating  to 
us  what  materials  were  still  at  hand  in  that  epoch. 

§  89.  Bibliographical.  Passing  on  to  the  MSS.  left  us,  we  find 
a  very  great  number  of  copies  of  the  Works,  covered  with  scho- 
lia, and  often  with  illustrations  of  the  farming  implements,  but  not 
critically  valuable.  The  oldest  seems  to  be  the  Medicean  5,  ot 
the  eleventh  century  ;  then  the  Medicean  3  (Plut.  xxxii.  16),  ot 
the  twelfth.  The  rest  are  all  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century 
books,  generally  on  paper,  full  of  scholia  and  notes,  and 
variously  put  together  with  the  other  Hesiodic  works,  and  with 
Theocritus,  Nonnus,  the  pseudo-Pythagorea,  and  other  moral 
fragments.  The  MS.  copies  of  the  Theogony  and  Shield  are 
not  so  frequent,  and  none,  I  believe,  so  old  as  the  twelfth 

1  All  these  legends  have  been  classified,  with  little  positive  result,  by 
O.  Fried?!  in  Fleckeisen's  Jahrbiicher  for  1879,  pp.  235,  sq.  ;  to  which  I 
refer  the  reader  for  elaborate  details.  There  is  also  a  paper  on  Hesiod's 
Life  by  G.  H.  Flach  in  Hermes  for  1874,  pp.  357,  sq. 


120  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  vii. 

century.  The  sort  of  collection  generally  found  in  the  MSS.  is 
well  reproduced  in  the  beautiful  Aldine  ed.  of  1495,  which, 
though  the  Works  were  brought  out  a  year  or  two  earlier  at 
Milan,  is  the  first  which  gives  the  whole,  and  is  the  Ed. 
princeps  for  the  rest  of  Hesiod.  It  contains  a  great  many 
other  authors,  and  even  stray  collections  of  proverbs.  The 
Juntine  eds.  of  1515  and  1540  are  said  to  be  mere  copies  of 
the  Aldine.  That  of  Trincavelli  in  1537  gives  the  scholia  in 
full,  and  has  independent  merit.  Then  comes  the  great  edi- 
tion of  Stephanus  (1566),  and  a  very  complete  one  of  D. 
Heinsius.  Of  later  commentators  the  first  place  is  due  to 
Gaisford,  whose  Oxford  edition  is  admirable  from  its  fulness  of 
research  about  both  MSS.  and  scholia  (Poetce  minores  Gr&ci, 
1814-20).  Next  may  be  mentioned  Gottling's  (and  ed.  Gotha, 
1843),  ^e  most  convenient  for  the  ordinary  student;  and, 
lastly,  Mr.  F.  A.  Paley's,  which,  with  all  its  merits,  is  over- 
loaded with  very  questionable  notes  about  the  Digamma,1  and 
the  etymology  of  old  Greek  words.  The  best  complete  text  of 
the  poems  and  fragments  is  that  of  F.  S.  Lehrs  in  Didot's 
series  (2nd  ed.  1862).  There  are  endless  special  dissertations 
by  the  Germans,  which  are  enumerated  (up  to  1871)  by  Bern- 
hardy.  Mutzell's  book  De  Emendatione  Theogonice  Hesiodecz, 
Lips.,  1833,  is  praised  as  very  painstaking  and  complete.  An 
Index  Hesiodeus  was  published  at  Naples  in  1791  by  Ossorio 
di  Figueroa,  but  I  have  not  seen  it.  There  is  also  an  edition 
of  the  Tluogonyty  F.  A.  Wolf  (1783). 

The  imitations  in  Virgil's  Georgics  are  too  well  known 
to  require  closer  description.  There  are  translations  into 
German  by  Voss,  and  Uschner,  and  into  French  by  Gin  and 

1  I  have  said  nothing  about  the  Digamma,  because  I  do  not  believe  its 
presence  or  absence  can  be  of  the  least  use  in  determining  the  genuineness 
or  spuriousness  of  any  line  in  Hesiod.  The  careful  researches  of  the  Ger- 
mans have  shown  that  it  is  present  or  absent  in  the  same  word  according 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  metre  ;  and  there  seems  really  evidence  for  the  fact 
that  the  Digamma  was  a  letter  which  could  be  arbitrarily  used  or  dispensed 
with  in  epic  poetry.  There  is  the  most  surprising  variation,  exactly  of 
the  same  kind,  though  without  metrical  reasons,  in  the  inscriptions  of  the 
same  towns.  I  will  not  deny  that  there  may  be  a  law  of  its  use,  but  so  far 
this  law  does  not  seem  likely  to  be  discovered. 


CH.  VII.  TRANSLATIONS  OF  HESIOD.  121 

Bergier,  in  addition  to  the  Latin  hexameter  translations  of  the 
Italians,  N.  Valla,  and  B.  Zamagna,  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  the  early  French  one  of  Jacques  le  Gras  in  1586. 

As  to  English  translations,  I  cannot  find  any  mention  of 
more  than  three.  The  first  is  of  the  Works  only,  the  '  Georgics 
of  Hesiod,'  by  George  Chapman  (1618).  This,  like  all  Chap- 
man's work,  is  poetical  and  spirited,  but  often  very  obscure 
to  modern  readers,  though  it  constantly  cites  the  original  in 
foot-notes.  The  book,  which  was  very  scarce,  has  been  re- 
printed, with  other  of  Chapman's  translations,  by  J.  R.  Smith 
(London,  1858).  Next  we  have  the  work  of  Cooke  (1743), 
who  seems  unaware  of  Chapman's  translation,  and  who  gives 
us  a  pretentious  and  dull  rendering  of  the  Works  and 
Theogony  in  heroic  verse.  The  last  and  best,  and  the  only 
complete  translation,  including  the  Shield,  is  that  of  Elton 
(2nd  ed.  1815),  who  knew  his  predecessors  well,  and  gives  us 
scholarly  renderings  of  the  Works  in  heroic  rhymes,  and  of 
the  other  two  poems  in  blank  verse.  Parnell's  Pandora,  or  the 
Rise  of  Woman,  is  a  free  imitation  of  the  corresponding  pair  of 
passages  in  Hesiod. 

§  90.  There  is  no  use  in  discussing  the  several  busts  and 
statues  of  Hesiod,  which  Pausanias  saw  and  describes  in  his  tour 
through  Greece.  It  need  hardly  be  stated  that  these,  like  the 
portraits  of  Homer,  were  mere  works  of  imagination,  and  have 
no  historical  claims.  There  are  five  epigrams  or  epitaphs  upon 
him  extant,  two  quoted  at  the  end  of  Tzetzes'  Greek  preface  to 
his  works,  and  stated  to  be  set  over  his  tomb  in  the  agora  of 
Orchomenus— one  of  them  ascribed  to  Pindar.  Three  others 
are  in  the  Anthology,  one  of  which,  by  Alcseus  of  Messene,  has 
considerable  merit. 

§  91.  There  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the  antagonism  between 
the  Homeric  and  Hesiodic  rhapsodists  in  the  legend  of  the 
contest  of  the  poets,  and  we  may  even  infer  from  the  alleged 
victory  of  the  inferior  but  more  didactic  poet,  that  as  the 
audience  became  more  reflective,  and  as  they  came  to  regard 
the  poet  as  an  educator,  the  more  explicit  moral  purpose,  and 
the  plainer  preaching  of  the  Hesiodic  school,  came  to  be 

VOL.  i. — 6 


122  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  VII. 

regarded  as  superior  to  the  mere  stimulating  of  the  sense  of 
honour  through  the  imagination  by  the  heroic  poems.  But  it 
might  have  been  easily  foretold  that  the  controversy  would  not 
stop  there,  and  that  as  philosophy  arose,  the  whole  system  of 
the  chivalry  of  Homer  and  the  Theogonic  dogmatism  of  Hesiod 
would  find  opponents  from  a  totally  different  platform.  It 
might  perhaps  even  have  been  anticipated  that  these  opponents 
would  choose  the  very  form  of  the  Ionic  epos  to  embody  their 
criticisms.  The  Golden  Verses^  ascribed  to  the  school  of  Pytha- 
goras, which  contain  the  condensed  morals  of  the  older  epics, 
even  were  they  genuine,  are  not  so  natural  an  outcome  of  the 
clever  restless  Greek  mind  as  the  making  of  objections  and 
exceptions. 

§  92.  These  found  their  earliest  spokesman  in  Xenophanes 
of  Colophon,  who  travelled  through  the  Hellenic  world  during 
most  of  the  fifth  century,  but  who  seems  to  have  formulated  his 
system  in  early  life,  and  to  have  disseminated  it  in  his  wanderings 
as  a  rhapsode,  in  opposition  to  those  who  were  reciting  the  old 
epics  at  every  festival  throughout  Greece.  Xenophanes  was 
indeed  a  poet  of  various  accomplishments,  and  we  have  ad- 
mirable fragments  of  his  elegiacs,  which  will  be  mentioned  in 
their  place,  as  well  as  a  few  iambic  lines.  But  these,  though  they 
show  the  independent  and  radical  spirit  of  the  man,  were  chiefly 
social  poems,  and  evidently  did  not  contain  his  main  philosophy. 
This  he  published  by  going  about  as  a  rhapsode,  and  reciting 
it  in  the  same  epic  form  as  the  poems  of  Homer  and  Hesiod. 
We  have  sufficient  remnants  to  show  that  he  systematically 
attacked  the  anthropomorphism  of  Greek  religion,  the  plurality 
and  conflicting  interests  of  the  gods,  and  that  he  asserted  the 
unity  and  purity  of  the  Deity.  But  the  allusions  of  such  critics  as 
Aristotle  prove  that  his  polemic  was  not  merely  theological,  and 
that  his  negative  criticism  was  associated  with  metaphysical 
speculations  on  the  unity,  not  only  of  the  Deity,  but  of  the 
world.  It  was  from  this  point  of  view  that  he  was  the  founder  of 
the  Eleatic  school,  as  he  lived  much  of  his  later  life  in  this 
Italian  city,  and  as  his  system  was  taken  up  and  developed  by 
his  great  pupil  Parmenides. 

1  Their  remains  are  printed  at  the  end  of  Gottling's  Hedod. 


CH.  vii.  PARMENIDES.  123 

§  93.  If  we  could  trust  the  chronological  points  in  Plato's  dia- 
logues, Parmenides  was  sixty-five  when  Socrates  was  a  'very 
young  man,'  perhaps  between  fifteen  and  twenty  ;  but  Plato 
cares  for  none  of  these  things,  and  looks  only  to  dramatic  and 
not  to  historical  propriety.  It  seems  more  likely  that  Parme- 
nides came  earlier,  perhaps  about  the  opening  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury, and  he  still  adhered  in  philosophy  to  the  old  didactic  epic, 
which  had  been  consecrated  to  serious  teaching  by  Hesiod 
and  his  school.  But  it  is  evident  that  while  prose  composition, 
both  in  history  and  in  philosophy,  since  Hecatseus  and  Hera- 
cleitus  showed  the  way,  made  rapid  progress  among  the  lonians 
of  Asia  Minor,  the  Greeks  of  Italy  and  Sicily  adhered  to  the 
poetic  form,  as  is  the  case  with  Empedocles,  who  wrote  even 
a  generation  or  two  later.  Thus  the  fact  that  Heracleitus  had 
published  his  thoughts  in  prose  at  Ephesus  is  no  proof  that 
the  hexameter  poem  of  Parmenides  may  not  have  been  later  in 
date,  though  more  primitive  in  form.  We  fortunately  have  the 
opening  of  the  work  preserved  by  Sextus  Empiricus,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  it  combined  (like  the  poem  of  Empedocles 
copied  by  Lucretius)  remarkable  brilliancy  of  fancy  with  pro- 
fundity of  thought.1 

1  This  introduction  is  preserved  by  Sextus  Empiricus  (Adv.  Math.  vii. 
Ill): 

"ITTTOI  rat  pe  <pfpovffiv,  -offov  T'  eVt  0v/*l>s  IKO.VOI, 
irefj.irov,  eirei  fj.'  ts  68bv  ftfjaav  iro\vq>f][j.ov  ayovffcu 
Aaifj.oi'os  fy  Kara  irdvr'  avr^  <pfpei  elSora.  fytara' 
TT)  (f>ep6fj.T]i',  rri  yap  /j.e  TroXixppaarroi  (f>fpoi>  "irwoi 
ap/j.a  nraivovaai'  Kovpat  S*  6Sbv  •fjye/j.6vfvov 
'HXidSes  Kovpat,  irpo\nrov<rai  S<a/j.aTa  WKr6s, 
els  <j)dos,  oiffdjj.fva.1  Kpa/riav  &TTO  xePff^  KaXvirrpas. 
"A|cor  8'  eV  xvoiyffiv  i'et  ffvpiyyos  avT^v 
aldo/JLfvos,  Sotois  yap  tire'iyero  SivwToiffi 
KVK\OIS  a,u</)OTepco06j',  ore  airepxpiaro  irff^ireiv. 
"Ev9a  TrvAai  VVKTOS  re  Kal  ij/j.a.r6s  flffi  Kf\£v9iai', 
Kai  ff<pa.s  inrfpdvpov  a^is  exet  Ka^  AaiVos  ov$6s, 
aural  S'  cdQepi  KeicXfivrai  fj.fyd\oiffi  Ovperpots 
rSov  Se  AIKTJ  iroKviroivos  e%ft  K\rfti>as  afj-oifiovs. 
r^v  8e  irap(pd/j.fi>ai  Kovpai  (j.a\a.K(n<n  \6yoiffi 
iret(rav  tTri^paSecos,  Sis  ff<f>us  fiaXavwrhv  o^fja 
avTfptws  cocme  trv\t<av  airv  ral  5e  Ovptrpwv 


i24  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

Other  considerable  extracts  from  Parmenides  are  quoted  by 
Simplicius,  in  which  we  no  longer  find  the  theological  tone  of 
Xenophanes,  but  the  purely  metaphysical  treatment  of  the  doc- 
trine known  ever  since  as  the  Eleatic  philosophy.  The  eternal 
and  incorruptible  unity  of  Being,  as  opposed  to  the  fleeting  un- 
reality of  sense,  is  illustrated  with  much  power  and  variety.  The 
celebrated  dialogue  of  Plato,  in  which  Parmenides  is  the  chief 
speaker,  as  well  as  many  allusions  of  Aristotle,  give  us  full  in- 
formation concerning  his  philosophy.  But  from  a  literary  point 
of  view,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  though  he  wrote  this  hexameter 
poem  on  Nature,  he  was  not  a  poet  in  the  same  sense  as  Xeno- 
phanes, who  also  composed  both  elegiacs  and  iambics,  and  was 
a  professed  reciter.  He  even  repeated  his  views,  according  to 
Plato  (Soph.  237,  A),  in  a  prose  form  —  the  form  exclusively 
adopted  by  his  immediate  followers,  Zeno  and  Melissus. 
These  therefore  we  must  class  under  the  head  of  early  prose 
writers. 

§  94.  It  is  indeed  asserted  in  Aristotle's  Poetic,  that  this  sort 
of  epic  composition  has  nothing  in  common  with  Homer  but 
the  metre,  wherefore,  he  adds,  you  call  the  one  a  poet,  and  the 
other  rather  a  physiologer  than  a  poet.  This  remark  specially 
applies  to  Empedodes,  the  third  and  greatest  name  on  the  list 
of  our  philosophic  poets,  and  is  but  another  example  of  the 
reckless  judgments  which  the  authority  of  Aristotle  has  disse- 

Xaff/t'  o.\o.vks  iroiriffav  at>airrd/j.evai,  ro\irx<fajavt 
&£ovas  iv  ffvpiy^iv  apoifiaSbv  et'A£fa<rat 
y6/ji.<l>ois  Kal  irep6vri<nv  a.pr\p6ras'  ?j  pa  Si  avriav 
lOvs  «XOJ/  Kovpai  KO.T*  a,fj.a^iritv  apyua  Kal  'ITTTTOVS. 
Kai  jue  °«a  irp6<pptoiv~vTr(5t£aTO,  X6<Pa  5e  xftP^ 
8e|iTepV  t\fv,  aiSe  8"  tiros  ipdro  Kal  p.e  trpocrrji/Saf 
TA  KoCp'  aJdava/rotai  ffvvdopos  3)vi6xoiffit>, 
TirTrous  Tai  ffe  tpepovffiv  IKOLVUV  r]^Tfpov  Sea, 
X<£p'  ^""^  oijTi  ffe  /j.oipa  KO/CTJ  Trpotiirf/jiire  vefffdai 
T^JV  S'  <58bi/  (^  yap  air  avdptairtav  ftcrbs  irdrov  effriv), 
aAA.a  Bffus  re  Siitr]  re.     Xpeii  8e  <re  irdvra  irvdeffOai 


(os,  TOS  OVK  tvi  irffri 
Kal  Tavra  /J.a6-fiffeai  us  ra  SoKovi/ra 
vSivai  Sta  iravrbs  ira.vra  ireptavra. 


CH.  VII.  EMPEDOCLES.  125 

minated  by  means  of  this  corrupt  treatise.  For  had  the  obser- 
vation been  applied  to  Parmenides,  it  might  have  been  possibly 
defended,  though  our  scanty  remains  contain  passages  of  lofty 
imagination  and  true  poetic  fire.  But  applied  to  Empedocles, 
the  remark  is  simply  ridiculous,  and  might  have  been  contemp- 
tuously rejected,  even  if  there  were  not  preserved  to  us  by 
Diogenes  '  the  opinion  of  the  true  Aristotle,  which  happens  in 
express  terms  to  contradict  the  random  talk  of  the  Poetic.  We 
have  furthermore  the  judgments  of  the  careful  Dionysius  on 
his  '  austere  harmony,'  which  he  compares  to  that  of  yEschylus, 
and  the  not  inconsistent  praise  of  Plutarch  for  his  inspired  en- 
thusiasm. Mr.  Symonds,  in  his  essay  on  the  poet,  goes  so  far 
as  to  call  him  the  Greek  Shelley,  and  gives  some  striking 
grounds  for  this  singular  judgment. 

As  a  poet,  therefore,  Empedocles  must  be  ranked  very  high, 
and  Cicero  expressly  tells  us  that  his  verses  were  far  superior 
to  those  of  Xenophanes  and  Parmenides,  themselves  no  mean 
artists  on  similar  subjects.  This  is  the  more  remarkable  be- 
cause he  came  late  in  the  development  of  didactic  poetry, 
and  in  the  age  when  prose  had  already  been  employed  with 
great  success  by  Heracleitus  for  the  purposes  of  philosophic  ex- 
position. But  although  Empedocles  seems  not  to  have  been 
born  till  about  490  B.C.,  and  was  about  contemporary,  both  in 
birth  and  death,  with  Herodotus,  he  was  born,  not  in  the  home 
of  nascent  prose,  but  at  Agrigentum  in  Sicily,  where  he  became 
one  of  the  forerunners  of  a  literature  widely  different  from  that 
of  the  Ionic  race.  For  Gorgias  is  called  his  pupil,  and  though 
he  does  not  appear  to  have  composed  any  treatise  in  prose,  he 
was  considered  by  Aristotle  the  first  founder  of  the  art  of  rhe- 
toric, which  Gorgias  made  the  occupation  of  his  life. 

Though  of  noble  family  —  his  grandfather  Empedocles  had 
won  with  a  four-horsed  chariot  at  the  7ist  Olympiad,  his 
father  Meton  had  been  prominent  in  expelling  the  tyrant 
Thrasydseus—  he  was  firmly  devoted  to  democratic  principles, 
and  fought  for  the  demos  of  his  city  against  the  aristocracy. 


1  viii.  3  :   eV  8e  rip  irepJ   iroiijTcDj/  §t\aiv  STI   Kal  'OfiripiKbs  6  ' 
Kai  Seivbs  irfpl  rV  tppaffiv  yeyovt,  /jieTa<f>opiK6s  r'  &>v  nal  roTs  &\\ots  roly  irtpl 
ironjTiKrjv  firiT€V'YfJ.affi 


126  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  vn. 

But,  like  Herodotus  and  other  patriots  of  that  period,  he  found 
it  unpleasant  to  live  at  home  among  hostile  and  jealous  neigh- 
bours ;  he  accordingly  left  Agrigentum,  and  retired  to  the 
Peloponnese,  where  he  seems  to  have  died  in  obscurity.  This 
we  may  infer  from  the  many  uncontradicted  legends  which 
became  current  through  Greece  upon  the  subject.  Empedocles 
is  one  of  the  most  curious  and  striking  figures  in  Greek  litera- 
ture, for  he  combined  the  characters  of  soothsayer,  magician 
and  mystic  with  those  of  an  earnest  and  positive  speculator, 
who  first  attempted  a  mechanical  explanation  of  nature.  His 
account  of  the  gradual  growth  and  development  of  animated 
organisms  even  gives  him  the  right  to  be  called  the  oldest 
Greek  forerunner  of  Darwin. 

These  physiological  and  physical  speculations,  which  fasci- 
nated the  mind  of  Lucretius,  belong  to  the  province  of  the 
historian  of  philosophy.  But  the  literary  form  in  which  they 
were  clothed  causes  much  perplexity.  For  this  poet-philosopher, 
this  positivist- magician,  would  not  clothe  his  metaphysic  in  any 
but  allegorical  dress.  Thus  the  four  elements  l  which  he  was 
the  first  to  assert  against  Parmenides'  single  Being,  and  which 
lived  in  philosophy  till  yesterday,  are  clothed  in  the  garb  of  the 
peoples'  gods :  and  his  attraction  and  repulsion,  by  which  the 
world  of  experience  was  compounded  out  of  the  elements,  were 
called  Love  and  Hate  (<bi\6rr)c  and  NtTcoc),  the  former  even 
Aphrodite.  Along  with  these  apparent  concessions  to  the  popular 
faith,  he  held  Pythagorean  doctrines  as  to  the  transmigration  of 
souls,  and  the  consequent  crime  of  destroying  animal  life,  though 
his  politics  separate  him  widely  from  the  Pythagorean  school. 
His  metaphysic  is  an  independent  syncretism  of  Eleatic  and 
Heracleitic  doctrines,  with  a  predominance  of  the  latter,  perhaps 
on  account  of  the  deeper  poetry  of  Heracleitus'  prose.  But 
though  the  man's  personality,  his  splendid  dress,  his  numerous 
attendants,  and  his  bold  claims  to  supernatural  power,  made 
him  a  great  figure  in  the  Sicily  of  his  day,  his  mystical  and 
theological  turn  would  not  bear  the  light  of  positive  science, 

1  Tfffffapa  TUV  irdvTGiv  pt£(i>/j.a.Ta  irpwrov  frxove- 
Zfvs  [air]  apy^s  "Hpi)  [earth]  re  <ptpf<r&ios  r)5'  'A'iSuvtvs  [fire] 
NJJOTIS  [water]  ff  $j  Saicpvois  rtyyei  Kpovvu>fj.a  Pptlrfivv. 


CH.  vii.  POETRY  AND  PHILOSOPHY..  127 

and  he  is  therefore  referred  to  with  less  respect  by  succeeding 
critics  as  a  philosopher  than  as  a  lofty  poet.  The  tragedies 
and  political  writings  ascribed  to  him  were  spurious  ;  his  tyvaiw 
and  KciOapnoi,  the  formal  exposition  of  his  metaphysic  and  of 
his  theology,  are  the  only  works  recognised  by  modem  critics. 
It  has  been  inferred  from  the  fragments  that  these  books  were 
not  very  consistent,  that  the  various  purifications  and  rites 
recommended  (in  the  KaQapfiol)  were  little  in  consonance  with 
the  mechanical  and  positive  explanations  of  his  fyvaiKu. 

§  95.  They  were,  moreover,  very  alien  to  the  dialectic  of  Gor- 
gias  and  the  succeeding  sophists,  who  cared  little  for  dogmatic 
theology,  and  consistently  rejected  the  ritual  of  the  old  religion 
along  with  its  dogmas.  The  sophists  were  still  more  marked  in 
their  rejection  of  epic  verse  as  the  vehicle  for  philosophic  teach- 
ing, and  in  the  uniform  adoption  of  prose,  which  was  even  then 
introduced  in  the  school  of  Asia  Minor.  So  strongly  was  this 
felt  in  the  next  generation,  that  there  arises  a  formal  oppo- 
sition between  philosophers  and  poets,  the  latter  of  whom  were 
regarded  as  the  mere  exponents  of  the  popular  creed.  Of 
course  this  would  have  been  absurdly  false  in  the  days  of  Par- 
menides  and  Empedocles;  but  even  the  latter  was  almost  behind 
his  age,  and  from  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  onwards 
Greek  philosophy  consistently  rejected  the  adoption  of  a  poetical 
form.  Anaxagoras  was,  no  doubt,  reflected  in  Euripides,  and 
Epicurus  in  Menander ;  but  these  speculative  features  in  the 
drama  were  the  mere  natural  reflex  of  the  deepest  thinking  of 
the  day  upon  its  most  thoughtful  and  serious  poets.  The  phi- 
losophy of  Euripides  was  a  mere  parergon  of  his  tragedy.  It 
is  to  this  fixed  purpose  of  philosophy  to  abandon  poetry  that 
we  must  attribute  the  defection  of  such  imaginative  minds  as 
Hippocrates  and  Plato  from  the  ranks  of  the  Greek  poets, 
among  whom  the  latter  (as  an  epigrammatist)  even  made  his 
first  essay.  The  history  of  philosophy  since  that  day  confirms 
the  Greeks  as  to  the  literary  propriety  of  this  decision.  Despite 
the  splendid  attempt  of  Lucretius  to  reproduce  in  the  form  of 
Empedocles  the  most  prosaic  and  vulgar  of  systems,  his  poem 
had  little  influence  upon  his  age,  and  is  even  spoken  of 
by  Cicero  with  some  contempt.  The  Neoplatonists,  however 


128  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  VII. 

mystical  and  Eleatic  in  tone,  never  returned  to  the  more 
ancient  and  indeed  natural  garb  of  their  vague  Pantheism.  The 
Middle  Ages  were  dominated  by  the  prosaic  Aristotle.  Nor 
did  any  of  the  great  heralding  of  modern  thought,  the  rich 
imagery  of  Bacon,  the  mystic  dawning  of  Boehme,  the  god- 
intoxicated  cosmogony  of  Spinoza,  proclaim  itself  to  a  world 
weary  of  the  dry  and  arid  light  of  prose  logic  in  the  form  con- 
secrated of  old  to  the  union  of  thought  and  fancy.  In  later 
days,  though  modern  poetry  is  full,  perhaps  too  full,  of  meta- 
physic  and  of  anthropology,  we  have  no  greater  attempt  at 
writing  systematic  philosophy  in  verse  than  Pope's  Essay  on 
Man,  or  Mandeville's  Fable  of  the  Bees.  Thus  Empedocles  is 
peculiarly  interesting  as  the  last  thinker  in  European  philo- 
sophy who  brought  out  a  new  system  in  the  form  of  a  poem. 

His  fragments  are  preserved  in  Sextus  Empiricus,  Plutarch, 
and  Simplicius,  and  are  best  collected  by  Miillach  (in  Didot's 
Fragg.  Philosoph.}.  There  are  interesting  monographs  on  him 
in  all  the  histories  of  Greek  philosophy,  especially  Zeller's,  and 
in  Mr.  Symonds'  first  series  on  the  Greek  poets.  The  legend 
of  his  death  in  the  crater  of  Etna  has  inspired  poets  down  to  our 
own  day,  like  Mr.  Arnold,  and  still  lingers  about  the  traditions 
of  the  mountain  through  changes  of  race  and  of  language. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

\ 

THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS   AND   TRIFLES. 

§  96.  THERE  is  yet  another  class  of  epic  hexameter  poetry 
extant,  besides  the  proper  Ionic  epics,  and  the  didactic  poems 
of  Hesiod  and  the  philosophers.  There  are  transmitted  to  us, 
under  the  title  of  Homeric  Hymns,  a  collection  of  five  longer 
and  twenty-nine  shorter  poems  in  epic  dialect  and  metre, 
each  inscribed  to  some  particular  god,  and  narrating  some 
legend  connected  with  him,  but  in  no  sense  religious  hymns, 
as  were  those  of  Pamphus  or  the  hymns  of  the  choral  lyric 
poets.  The  Homeric  Hymns  are  essentially  secular  and  not 
religious  ;  they  seem  distinctly  intended  to  be  recited  in 
competitions  of  rhapsodes,  and  in  some  cases  even  for  direct 
pay  ;  l  they  are  all  in  form  preludes  (irpooifjun)  to  longer  re- 
citations,2 apparently  of  epic  poems,3  though  the  longer  five 
are  expanded  into  substantially  independent  compositions. 

1  Hymn  vi.  suit  fin.  : 

Sbs  8"  tv  ayiavi 

ffj.^v  8'  evrvvov  a.oi8-f)t>. 


And  v.  xxx.  and  xxxi.  sub  fin.  : 

trp6<f>p<av  8'  avr'  (ptirjs  fiioTOV  dv^pe'  oirofe. 

2  o?/«j,  according  to  Bergk,  meant  any  song,  especially  an  epic  poem. 
oT/Jios  is  used  with  a  genitive  (eirfcav,  &c.)  qualifying  it.     Pausanias  calls  a 
hymn  of  Alcseus  to  Apollo  a  •jrpooi/j.toi',  probably  because  it  was  like  in 
character  to  these  Hymns.     The  v6/j.oi  were  really  devotional  poems,  and 
are  as  such  contrasted  by  Pausanias  with  the  secular  hymn%  of  the  col- 
lection before  us. 

3  Hymn  xxxi.  : 

IK   ffto  8'  ap^dfj.fi'os  K\fi<ru  /j.ep6irdsv  yevos 
rifiLiQeoiv,  £ii>  epya  0eoJ  d 

6* 


130  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  vin. 

§  97.  The  Hymn  to  the  Delian  Apollo,  apparently  the  third 
in  order  in  the  archetype  of  our  MSS.,  is  by  far  the  best  known 
and  oftenest  quoted  of  the  collection.  It  owes  this  distinction 
chiefly  to  the  famous  description  near  its  close  of  the  old 
festival  at  Delos,  whither  all  the  lonians  came,  with  their  wives 
and  children,  to  witness  dancing,  singing  and  boxing,  and  to 
wonder  at  the  ventriloquism  which  the  Delian  priestesses  appear 
to  have  studied  to  great  perfection.  Then  follows  a  somewhat 
boastful  assertion  of  excellence  on  the  part  of  the  rhapsodist 
— the  blind  man  of  Chios.  The  main  body  of  the  hymn  nar- 
rates the  adventures  of  Latona  before  the  birth  of  Apollo,  her 
final  reception  by  the  personified  island  Delos,  and  the  long- 
delayed  birth  of  the  god.  Artemis  is  not  mentioned,  and  can- 
not therefore  have  been  regarded  as  his  twin-sister  in  the  Delian 
legend.  The  style  of  the  poem  is  good  and  clear,  and  indi- 
cates a  date  when  epic  language  and  metre  were  perfectly 
understood. 

§  98.  Our  MSS.  combine  this  hymn  (178  lines)  and  what 
is  now  established  to  be  quite  a  different  work,  the  Jfymn 
to  the  Pythian  Apollo.  The  allusions  of  Thucydides  and  of 
Aristides *  imply  that  they  quote  from  the  end  of  the  former 
hymn  (v.  172),  which  is  only  the  case  if  we  separate  the  Pythian 
hymn.  Furthermore,  the  scholiast  on  Pindar 2  quotes  some 
lines  as  Hesiod's,  in  which  he  boasts  of  contending  with  Homer 
at  Delos  in  hymns  to  Apollo.  This  shows  an  old  belief  that  a 
second  hymn  to  Apollo,  by  Hesiod,  existed.  The  Pythian  hymn 
has  quite  this  character ;  it  is  altogether  occupied  with  Boeotian 
and  Delphian  legends,  and  celebrates  the  settlement  of  the  god 
at  the  rocky  Pytho  after  his  colloquy  with  the  fountain-nymph 
Delphusa,  near  Haliartus,  and  his  slaying  of  the  Python.  Then 
follows  his  adventure,  in  the  form  of  a  dolphin,  with  the  Cretan 
sailors,  whom  he  brought  round  the  Peloponnesus  from  their 
course,  and  established  as  his  priests  at  the  oracle.  Besides 
the  Boeotian  character  of  its  legends,  the  genealogical  and 
etymological  tone  of  the  poem  betrays  the  didactic  spirit  of 
the  Hesiodic  school ;  and  there  seems  little  doubt  that  it  was 
composed  by  some  Delphian  or  Boeotian  jjioet  in  imitation  of 
1  Cf.  Bergk,  LG.  i.  p.  753.  «  Nem.  ii.  i. 


CH.  viil.  THE  PYTHIAN  HYMN.  131 

the  former  hymn,  which  it  closely  follows  in  its  construction, 
and  ofttimes  in  diction. 

There  are  many  disturbances  in  the  text,  and  to  these  may 
be  ascribed  apparent  blunders  in  the  geography  of  Bceotia, 
which  the  author  seems  to  have  known  accurately.  He  is  also 
fully  acquainted  with  the  coasts  of  the  Peloponnesus.  There  are 
several  remarkable  and  evidently  intentional  omissions.  The 
site  of  Thebes  is  mentioned  as  being  still  forest,  and  therefore 
supposed  to  have  been  occupied  after  the  settlement  at  Delphi. 
Delphi,  again,  is  only  known  by  the  name  of  Pytho.  Kirrha,  the 
seaport  of  Krissa,  is  never  mentioned,  but  the  latter  is  said  to 
be  near  the  harbour.  Though  describing  a  curious  augury  with 
chariots  at  Onchestus  (w.  53,  sq.),  and  therefore  familiar  with 
one  form  of  horse-racing,  the  poet  represents  Delphusa  as 
dissuading  Apollo  from  settling  near  her  fountain  because  the 
sound  of  horses  and  chariots  would  disturb  him.  The  Germans 
infer  that  this  must  have  been  written  before  the  time  when 
the  Amphictyons,  immediately  after  the  sacred  war  (590  B.C.), 
established  chariot  races  at  the  Pythian  games.  This  seems  to 
me  founded  on  a  mistake,  for  these  games  were  not  carried  on 
at  Delphi,  which  is  quite  inaccessible  to  chariots,  and  where 
the  stadium  is  far  too  small  for  such  races,  but  at  a  special 
hippodrome  in  the  plain  below,  which  Pausanias  specially 
mentions,1  so  that  it  may  always  have  been  held  that  the  god 
chose  his  remote  and  Alpine  retreat  in  order  to  avoid  such 
disturbance.  The  priests  are  told  prophetically,  at  the  close  of 
the  poem,  that  through  their  own  fault  they  will  become  sub- 
ject to  a  strange  power,  and  this  again  is  supposed  to  point  to 
the  events  of  the  sacred  war.  But  there  is  no  certainty  in  these 
conjectures. 

Both  this  and  the  former  poem  seem  to  have  been  con- 
siderably interpolated,  as  for  example  with  the  episode  2  of  the 
birth  of  Typhon,  which  is  quite  in  the  manner  of  the  Theogony 
of  Hesiod.  Other  small  inconsistencies  may  rather  be  ascribed 
to  naivete  and  want  of  critical  spirit  than  to  a  diversity  of  poets. 
As  the  Delian  hymn  was  intended  for  recitation  at  Delos,  so  the 
Pythian  is  clearly  intended  for  some  such  purpose  at  Delphi, 
1  x.  37,  4.  2  ii.  w.  127-77. 


132  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  VIII. 

and  seems  not  far  removed  in  date  from  its  forerunner.  But 
as  the  Pythian  contests  were  with  the  lyre,  a  Hesiodic  poet 
could  hardly  have  competed  unless  he  abandoned  his  old  cus- 
tom of  reciting  without  accompaniment ;  and  indeed  the 
complete  silence  of  the  hymn  about  the  Pythian  contests  sug- 
gests some  definite  reason  for  not  mentioning  them. 

§  99.  The  Hymns  to  Hermes  (iii. )  and  to  Aphrodite  (iv.)  may 
be  brought  into  comparison  on  account  of  their  familiar  hand- 
ling of  gods,  though  in  other  respects  they  are  widely  contrasted. 
The  text  of  the  former  is  the  most  corrupt  of  all  the  Hymns, 
so  much  so  that  G.  Hermann  and  other  destructive  critics 
urge  with  great  force  their  theory  of  its  being  a  conglomerate 
of  various  short  pieces  by  different  authors.  The  opening  lines 
are  repeated  almost  verbatim  in  the  lesser  Hymn  to  Hermes, 
numbered  xviii.  in  the  collection;  but  it  is  clear  from  the  critical 
discussion  of  the  prefaces  to  Hesiod's  poems,  and  from  the  many 
short  procemia  actually  found  in  this  collection,  that  these  intro- 
ductions were  movable,  and  that  the  rejection  of  the  preface 
entails  no  presumption  against  the  unity  of  the  main  body  of 
the  poem.  The  Moscow  MS.  differs  remarkably  from  the  rest 
in  its  text  of  this  poem ;  according  to  Hermann,  because  it 
followed  another  recension,  according  to  Baumeister,  with 
whom  I"  agree,  because  the  scribe  copying  the  archetype  was  a 
learned  man,  and  set  himself  to  correct  and  emend  what  he 
thought  corrupt. 

The  text  of  the  Hymn  to  Aphrodite  is,  on  the  -contrary,  the 
purest  and  easiest  of  all,  and  it  is  only  the  perverse  ingenuity 
of  the  Germans  which  has  ventured  to  thrust  upon  us  here 
their  suspicions  of  interpolations.  There  appears  to  be  also 
a  considerable  contrast  between  the  two  poems  as  to  diction. 
While  the  Hymn  to  Aphrodite  is  in  very  pure  Ionic — almost 
Homeric — Greek,  and  clearly  composed  in  Asia  Minor,  the 
Hymn  to  Hermes  abounds  in  phrases  only  to  be  found  in 
Hesiod,1  and  shows  evidence  of  Boeotian  or  Arcadian  origin. 
Again,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  humour,  and  of  a  low  popular 
tone,  about  the  latter,  while  this  homely  tone  is  not  at  all  felt 
in  the  other.  Nevertheless,  these  poems,  as  I  have  said,  have 
Cf.  Mure,  ii.  p.  344,  note 


CH.  vin.  HYMNS  TO  HERMES  AND  APHRODITE.  133 

an  all-important  feature  which  makes  it  suitable  to  connect 
them  together — I  mean  the  bold  and  familiar  handling  of  the 
foibles  and  passions  of  the  gods.  Their  moral  tone  is  per- 
haps lower  than  that  of  any  other  old  Greek  poem,  if  we 
except  the  episode  called  the  lay  of  Demodocus,  in  the 
Odyssey — a  poem  which  bears  the  most  striking  resemblance 
in  tone  and  diction  to  the  fourth  hymn.  The  passion  of 
the  goddess  is  in  both  represented  as  a  foible,  but  hardly  as 
a  fault,  and  her  adventures  in  the  hymn  are  represented  as 
brought  upon  her  by  a  sort  of  retaliation  on  the  part  of  Zeus. 
The  description  of  her  progress  through  Mount  Ida,  her  power 
over  the  lower  animals  (vv.  70,  sq.),  and  her  meeting  with  An- 
chises,  are  told  with  great  beauty,  but  apparently  without  any 
feeling  of  reserve  on  the  part  of  the  poet.  It  was  not  till  Praxi- 
teles that  sculpture  dared  to  represent  the  undraped  beauty  of 
the  goddess  in  marble.  Poetry  cast  away  such  restrictions  far 
earlier.  There  is  also  a-  fine  description  of  the  old  age  of 
Tithonus  (vv.  237-46),  and  of  the  life  of  trees  as  bound  up  with 
that  of  the  wood-nymphs.  The  main  object  of  the  poem  seems 
the  flattery  of  the  family  of  Anchises  and  ^Eneas,  whose  alleged 
descendants  (as  is  prophesied  in  the  Iliad)  were  evidently  im- 
portant people  in  the  poet's  day.  We  have  no  evidence  where 
they  ruled,  or  whether  the  Dardanian  princes  encouraged  Greek 
poetry. 

The  Hymn  to  Hermes  does  not  describe  such  passion,  and  is 
an  account  of  the  birth  and  adventures  of  the  god,  setting 
forth  his  thieving  and  perjury  with  the  most  shameless  effrontery. 
To  the  ordinary  Greeks  great  ingenuity  was  enough  at  all  times 
to  palliate  or  even  to  justify  dishonesty,  and  though  Hesiodand 
the  Delphic  oracle  raised  their  voices  in  favour  of  justice  and 
truth,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  nation  was  thoroughly 
depraved  in  this  respect.  The  Hymn  to  Hermes  goes  through 
a  variety  of  adventures  of  the  god — his  stealing  of  the  oxen  of 
Apollo  immediately  after  his  birth,  his  invention  of  the  lyre,  his 
trial  and  perjury  before  Zeus,  and  the  amusement  and  good- 
nature of  Apollo  in  being  reconciled  to  him.  The  mention  of  the 
seven-stringed  lyre  has  induced  most  critics  to  date  the  poem 
after  Terpander's  time,  but,  on  the  other  side,  it  is  declared 


134  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  VIII. 

absurd  that  the  poet  should  describe  as  an  original  invention  of 
the  god  a  new  improvement  in  the  instrument  made  by  a  well- 
known  man  at  a  well-known  date.  It  is  therefore  argued  thr.t 
the  seven-stringed  lyre  was  not  unknown  in  ancient  days  in 
some  parts  of  Greece,  though  not  generally  adopted  by  literary 
lyric  poets  till  Terpander.  This  is  indeed  to  be  inferred  from 
Pausanias,  who  says  that  Amphion  naturalised  the  Lydian 
seven-stringed  lyre  in  Greece.  At  all  events,  this  improved 
lyre  must  have  been  in  common  use  when  the  poem  was 
composed,  probably  not  before  600  B.C. 

As  to  the  literary  merits  of  these  hymns,  authorities  are 
divided.  Most  of  the  Germans  place  the  hymn  to  Hermes 
very  high,  and  think  that  but  for  its  corruptions  it  would  be 
the  most  original  and  striking  of  the  collection.  Mure,  on  the 
other  hand,  thinks  the  fourth  to  be  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
the  hymns,  and  almost  worthy  of  Homer  himself.  Both  seem 
to  me  to  have  great,  but  contrasted  merits.  The  humour  and 
variety  of  the  one  are  perhaps  equalled  by  the  luxurious  richness 
of  the  other.  Both  are  precious  relics  of  old  Greek  poetry, 
and  curious  evidences  of  the  rapid  decay  of  the  old  Greek 
religion.  Shelley  has  left  us  a  translation  of  the  third  as  well  as 
of  some  of  the  shorter  hymns.  His  version  is  of  course  very  poe- 
tical, but  accentuates  the  comic  element  perhaps  too  strongly. 

§  100.  The  Hymn  to  Demeter  (v.),  of  nearly  500  lines,  is  of 
a  very  different  character,  and  is  to  be  identified  with  some 
Athenian  worship,  either  the  Panathenaic  festival,  if  there  was 
any  occasion  at  that  festival  for  such  a  recitation,  or  some 
religious  ceremony  at  Eleusis.  The  hymn  narrates  the  carry- 
ing off  of  Persephone,  who  wandered  in  search  of  flowers  through 
the  Mysian  plain,  and  was  entranced  with  delight  at  the  nar- 
cissus, which  is  described  with  great  enthusiasm  as  being  an 
important  emblem  in  the  Mysteries.  The  crying  out  of  Perse- 
phone is  heard  by  Hecate  and  Helios  alone,  from  whom  the 
distracted  mother  finds  out  what  has  happened  to  her  daughter. 
But  Demeter  is  still  more  wrath  at  hearing  that  it  was  done 
with  the  connivance  or  approval  of  Zeus,  and  she  deserts  the 
immortals  to  live  among  men.  So  she  comes  to  Eleusis,  where 
she  sits  by  the  wayside  and  meets  the  daughters  of  Keleus  going 


CH.  viii.  HYMN  TO  DIONYSUS.  135 

to  draw  water.  They  accost  her  with  kindness,  and  she  i? 
installed  as  nurse  of  their  infant  brother  Triptolemus. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  at  greater  detail  into  the  story, 
which  is  told  in  this  hymn  with  singular  clearness  and  beauty. 
Any  difficulties  which  occur  are  due  to  the  corruptions  of 
our  single  MS.,  or  to  the  covert  allusions  to  the  Mysteries 
which  are  evidently  before  the  poet's  mind  all  through  the  nar- 
ration of  the  legend.  The  critics  generally  do  not  speak  with 
sufficient  warmth  of  the  beauty  of  this  poem,  which  is,  in  my 
opinion,  far  the  noblest  of  the  hymns.  A  good  many  Atticisms 
have  been  detected  in  it  by  the  grammarians,  but  I  am  not  aware 
of  a  single  solid  argument  to  prove  its  date,  even  approximately.1 
It  was  well  known  to  the  ancients,  and  is  quoted  four  times 
by  Pausanias,  with  considerable  variations  from  our  text,  but 
these  are  probably  due  both  to  its  corruption  and  to  inaccuracy 
in  Pausanias  himself.  This  author  also  quotes  an  ancient  hymn 
of  Pamphos  on  the  same  legend,  which  seems  to  have  been 
very  similar  in  argument 

§  10 r.  Of  the  lesser  hymns  the  longest  (vii.)  is  that  to 
Dionysus,  which  describes  his  adventure  with  pirates,  whom  he 
astonished  and  overcame  by  miracles,  when  they  had  captured 
and  bound  him  on  their  ship.  The  critics  think  that  the  portrai- 
ture of  the  god  as  a  youth  points  to  the  age  of  Praxiteles,  be- 
cause older  Greek  plastic  art  had  uniformly  made  him  of  severe 
aspect,  and  apparently  middle  age.2  I  have  shown  above 
(p.  133)  that  in  the  case  of  Aphrodite  poetry  outran  sculpture  in 
its  development,  and  I  feel  convinced  that  the  change  in  the 
form  of  Dionysus  also  was  adopted  in  poetry  long  before  it  was 
attempted,  or  perhaps  could  be  attempted,  in  sculpture.  The 
hymn  seems  certainly  to  have  been  known  to  Euripides,  who 
builds  some  of  the  plot  of  his  Cyclops  on  it,  and  this  subject, 
perhaps  even  this  detail,  was  borrowed  from  the  older  Aris- 

1  Baumeister  (Conwi.  in  Hymn.  p.  280)  conjectures  it  to  be  of  the  time 
of  the  Peisistratidie,  when  epic  poetry  experienced  a  considerable  revival. 

2  This  story  is  beautifully  illustrated  in  the  frieze  of  the  graceful  chora- 
gic  monument  of  Lysicrates  at  Athens  (erected  332  B.C.) — a  monument 
which  is  now  best  studied,  not  on  the  spot,  but  in  the  drawings  of  Stuart 
and  Revett,  made  a  century  ago,  when  the  work  of  ruin  had  not  advanced 
so  far. 


136  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  VIIL 

tias.1  The  next  hymn  (viii.),  to  Ares,  is  quite  of  a  later  and 
metaphysical  turn.  It  abounds  in  strings  of  epithets,  and  rather 
celebrates  the  mental  influences  of  the  deity,  than  his  personal 
adventures.  This  hymn  is  accordingly  attributed  by  most  critics 
to  the  Orphic  school.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Hymn  xiv.,  To 
the  Mother  of  the  Gods  ;  nevertheless,  all  these  Homeric  hymns 
differ  widely  from  the  Orphic  hymns  which  still  remain  on  the 
same  subjects. 

I  will  only  mention  among  the  rest  that  to  Pan  (xix.), 
which  is  supposed  to  have  been  composed  after  the  time 
when  the  worship  of  Pan  was  introduced  at  Athens  (490  B.C.). 
This  little  poem  is  remarkable  as  one  of  the  few  extant  Greek 
works  which  show  a  love  and  sympathy  for  the  beauties  of  nature, 
and  which  indulge  the  fancy  in  fairy  pictures  of  bold  cliffs  and 
leafy  glens  peopled  by  dancing  nymphs,  and  resounding  with 
the  echo  of  piping  sweeter  than  the  nightingale,  and  the  voices 
of  sportive  and  merry  gods.  It  is  common  among  English 
critics  to  assert  that  only  in  Euripides  and  Aristophanes  of 
earlier  poets  can  we  find  this  peculiar  and  delightful  form  of 
imagination.  The  Hymn  to  Pan,2  which  reminds  us  strongly  of 

1  Fatin,  Etudes  sur  les  tragiqites  grecs,  iv.  290. 

'Afjuftl  fioi  'Epfj.eiao  <t>i\ov  y6vov  eWeTre,  Movcra, 
arynro'ST/j',  SiKfpwra,  (pt\6icpoTov,  OCTT'  ava  VICTT] 
SevSp-f]ft>r'  &u.v5i$  <poira  x°P°^fa't  Nu/t^atj' 
cure  /COT'  aiyi\tiros  ire'-rpijs  (TTtlftovffi  Kaprjva, 
Tlav  avaKfK\6/j.evai,  vouiov  6t6v,  ay\a(6eipov, 
avx/^ijfvff,  Ss  irdvra  \6<f>ot>  vi<p6evra  \4\oy\e, 
KOI  icopvQas  opt<ov  Kal  Trtrp^fina  Kf\ev6a,' 
<f)0ira  8'  fvOa  Kal  tvQa.  Sib.  puirriTa.  irvKvd, 


&\\ore  5'  aS 


iro\\a.K.i  8'  apyiv&ftna 
iro\XaKi  8'  Iv  Kvi}^o~tai  Sffi\a(re,  Orjpas  fvaipcav, 
o|e'a  8epK6(J.evos'  Tore  8'  fffirepos  %K\aytv  oios, 
&yprjs  f£avicav,  Sovdnuv  VTTO  fiovffa.v  a.8vpcav 
^Svfiov  •  OVK  &c  r6vye  irapaSpctjuot  tv  fj.f\ffff<nv 
Spvis,  ^T"  sapor  tro\vav6tos  ev  irerd\oiffif 
Gprjvov  firtirpoxeova-'  Idxfi  /nf\iyripvv  ootS^jj'. 
avv  Se  <r<ptv  r6rf  NvfjiQcu  opeffridSes,  \iyvfj.o\iroit 
Qoiriaffai  trvKva  iroffalv  eVJ  Kprivri  uf  \avv5py 


CH.  viii.  HYMNS  OF  CALLIMACHUS.  137 

Euripides'  chorus  (vv.  167  et  seqq.)  in  the  Helena,  shows  this 
limitation  to  be  unfounded.  The  rest  are  short  proems  to  various 
gods,  very  similar  in  character  to  the  spurious  opening  lines  of 
Hesiod's  Works;  one  of  them  (xxv.)  is  even  made  up  of  lines 
from  Hesiod's  Thcogony.  The  short  Hymns  (xiii.  and  xviii.), 
to  Hermes  and  Demcter  ere  selections  from  the  greater 

poems  in  honour  of  the  same  gods. 

It  appears  from  this  brief  review  that  the  so-called  Hymns 
are  a  very  various  and  motley  collection  of  proems  to  the  gods 
sung  by  rhapsodes  on  secular  occasions.  In  some  cases  these 
preludes  were  expanded  into  independent  poems.  The  older 
and  Ionic  pieces  breathe  a  familiar  and  very  secular  handling  of 
the  adventures  of  the  gods  ;  the  Hesiodic  pieces  were  more 
serious  and  intended  to  instruct  the  hearers  in  theology  ;  while 
the  semi-  Orphic  pieces  were  still  more  reflective  and  solemn. 
But  they  all  assume  the  tone  and  style  of  the  Ionic  epic  school. 
It  is  not  impossible,  in  spite  of  the  later  complexion  of  some 
few  of  them,  that  the  collection  was  made  by  the  commission 
of  Peisistratus  when  they  were  editing  or  collecting  the  remains 
of  both  Homer  and  Hesiod. 

§  102.  This  kind  of  poetry  was  revived,  as  might  be  expected, 
at  Alexandria,  and  we  have  still  five  hymns  extant  from  the  wreck 
of  Alexandrian  literature,  by  the  celebrated  Callimachus,1  whose 
wonderful  fertility  was  not  destined  to  produce  much  permanent 
fruit.  These  hymns  are  to  Zeus,  Apollo,  Artemis,  Delos,  and 
Demeter  respectively.  They  are  all  of  considerable  length,  those 
to  Artemis  and  Delos  being  the  longest,  but  none  of  them  are 
interesting.  They  celebrate,  like  their  Homeric  prototypes,  the 
birth  and  early  fortunes  of  the  god  addressed  ;  but  in  the  case 
of  Delos,  the  wanderings  and  sufferings  of  Latona,  who  is,  how- 
ever, encouraged  by  the  consolations  uttered  by  her  unborn 


e  irfpta-rfVfi  o&ptos  rix<&  — 

8ai(j.<av  5'  tvda  Kal  fvQa  x°P^>v>  Tore  5'  is  /xe'ow  'i 
irvKva.  irofflv  Sifirei'  \at(j>os  8'  firl  vSira.  Sa<j>otvbv 


tv  /J.a\aKCf  \fi/j.cavi,  r60t  Kpdicos  •ijS'  vaKivdos 

1  Bergk  thinks  (LG.  \.  p.  749)  that  Callimachus  imitated  not  the  secular 
hymns,  but  the  old  religious  names — on  what  evidence  I  know  not. 


138  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  VIII. 

child  !  Perhaps  the  best  of  these  over-learned  and  frigid 
poems  is  the  Hymn  to  Demeter,  which,  unlike  the  rest,  is 
in  Doric  dialect,  and  which  describes  with  some  humour  the 
insatiable  hunger  of  Erysichthon,  with  which  Demeter  visited 
him  for  cutting  down  a  poplar  in  her  sacred  grove.  The  text 
has  been  lately  edited,  with  more  care  than  it  deserves,  by 
Meineke  (Berlin,  1 86 1);  there  is  also  an  old  metrical  translation 
by  Dodd  (London,  1755).  But  modern  scholars  have  long 
since  decided  that  Callimachus,  however  famous  among  the 
Romans,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  classical  author,  though  he 
had  the  honour  of  being  printed  by  Const  Lascaris,  at  Florence, 
in  1494,  in  capital  letters,  among  the  very  earliest  Greek  texts. 
§  103.  We  have,  in  the  collection  of  so-called  Idylls  ascribed 
to  Theocritus,  three  poems  which  may  properly  be  considered 
in  connection  with  the  Homeric  Hymns.  One  of  them  (Idyll 
xxii.)  is  professedly  a  hymn  to  the  Dioscuri,  celebrating  the 
victory  of  Pollux  over  Amycus,  and  of  Castor  over  Lynceus. 
The  work  is  both  well  conceived  and  executed,  but  Theocritus' 
mimic  talent  makes  his  dialogue  between  Pollux  and  Amycus 
rather  more  dramatic  than  was  the  fashion  of  the  old  hymns. 
There  are  also  picturesque  touches  (vv.  37,  sq.),  which  speak 
the  poet  of  the  pastoral  Idylls.  Of  the  two  poems  (xxiv.  and 
xxv.)  on  Heracles,  the  first,  which  is  called  the  Infant 
Heracles,  and  narrates  his  killing  of  the  snakes  in  his  cradle, 
is  very  like  the  Hymns,  especially  that  to  Demeter,  though  com- 
posed in  the  Doric  dialect.  It  is  not  certain  that  we  have  the 
end  of  the  poem  preserved.  The  second  poem  is  somewhat 
more  epic  in  form,  and  is  probably  a  fragment  of  a  longer 
work,  or  composed  with  a  larger  plan.  It  narrates  the  visit  of 
Heracles  to  Augeias  of  Elis,  where  he  tells  the  king's  son  his 
adventure  with  the  Nemean  lion.  There  are  bucolic  expres- 
sions scattered  all  through  this  epic  poem,  which  seem  to  vouch 
for  its  authorship.  Many  critics  are  disposed  to  view  it  as  a  mere 
fragment  of  the  long  epics  on  Heracles  composed  by  Peisander 
and  his  school,  and  some  refer  it  to  Panyasis,  or  Rhianus. 
Nevertheless,  as  the  poem  stands,  it  detaches  one  or  two 
adventures  of  a  god,  and  tells  them  in  epic  form,  so  that  it  is 
fairly  to  be  connected  with  the  professed  imitations  of  the  Hymns 


CH.  viii.  THE  MAKGITES.  139 

m  the  other  Theocritean  poems  just  mentioned.  They  all  show 
not  only  a  perfect  handling  of  epic  style  and  manner,  but  con- 
siderable force  and  beauty,  and  are  quite  worthy  of  the  great 
name  of  their  author. 

§  104.  Of  the  ITa/yvta,  or  sportive  effusions  attributed  to 
Homer,  I  have  already  discussed  the  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice. 
It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  a  much  more  important 
poem,  the  Margites,  has  not  been  preserved,  inasmuch  as  it 
was  treated  as  the  genuine  work  of  Homer,  even  by  Aristotle, 
who  quotes  it  more  than  once,  and  sees  in  it  (though  falsely) 
the  first  germ  of  comedy.1  It  was  a  humorous  description  of  a 
foolish  young  man,  dabbling  in  various  knowledge,  but  ignorant 
of  all  practical  matters,  and  making  terrible  blunders  in  the 
more  delicate  situations  of  life.  From  the  extract  quoted  in 
the  good  editions  of  Suidas,2  it  seems  that  the  poem  was  not 
very  decent  in  its  wit.  There  was  a  very  remarkable  feature 
about  its  form — a  feature  which  has  exercised  modern  critics 
greatly.  Iambic  lines  were  inserted  at  irregular  intervals  among 
the  hexameters  of  which  it  mainly  consisted.  As  Suidas  and 
Eudocia  attribute  the  poem  to  Pigres,3  it  has  been  thought  that 
he  may  have  added  or  interlarded  these  lines.  This  is  the  con- 
clusion to  which  Bernhardy  comes,  without  positively  asserting 
Pigres  to  be  the  individual  interpolator  ;  but  the  conclusion  is 
not  very  safe,  for  in  another  of  the  iratyna,  the  Elpeffiwvri,  we 
have  the  same  feature,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
iambics  were  invented  by  Archilochus  ;  they  were  rather  an 
old  popular  form  of  verse  adopted  by  him  for  literary  purposes.4 
The  Margitcs  was  held  in  high  esteem  by  the  ancients,  and 
was  quoted  by  Cratinus,  possibly  Aristophanes,  Callimachus, 
and  the  stoic  Zeno.  By  Dio  Chrysostom,  apparently  quoting 
from  the  latter,  it  was  regarded  as  a  juvenile  work  of  Homer. 
In  Suidas'  day  it  seems  to  have  been  already  lost  The  mere 

1  Arist.  Poet.  4 ;  Nic.  Eth.  vi.  7. 

2  Sub  voc.  yiapyirrjs. 

3  Sub  voc.  Uiyp-ns,  the  brother  of  the  famous  Artemisia,  who  is  said  to 
have  interpolated  the  Iliad  with  pentameters. 

4  The  mixture  of  hexameters  and  iambics  is  to  be  seen  in  the  I25th 
frag,  (an  epigram)  of  Simonides,  ed.  Bergk, 


I4o  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.VITI. 

names  of  two  other  poems  classed  under  this  head  are  preserved, 
the  'ETna^A/c^e  and  the  'ETr-aTrtfcroe  a1£. 

§  105.  In  the  pseudo-Herodotean  Life  of  Hcmer  there  are 
preserved  several  other  curious  little  poems,  and  fragments  of 
poems,  which  were  falsely  ascribed  to  the  great  poet,  but  which 
are  to  us  inestimable  as  showing  a  glimpse  of  the  popular  songs 
of  early  Greece.  There  is  a  beautiful  epitaph  on  King  Midas 
of  Phrygia,  who  had  taken  a  daughter  of  Agamemnon,  despot 
of  Kyme,  to  wife,  and  who  died  at  the  time  of  the  Kimmerian 
invasion  (fire.  68cB.c.).  It  is  strictly  an  epigram  on  a  bronze 
statue  set  over  the  tomb.  l  There  is  also  an  address  to  the  poet's 
home,  Smyrna,  which  he  left  on  account  of  the  little  apprecia- 
tion of  his  art,  which  is  probably  (as  Bergk  well  says)  the  earliest 
echantillon  of  lyric  feeling,  though  clothed  in  epic  verse.  It  is 
entitled  to  the  Kymaans,  which  is  thought  a  mistake,  arising 
from  the  false  reading  Ku/uje  for  Sjuwp^ije  in  the  end  of  the  poem. 
The  poems  numbered  i.  and  ii.  are  fragments  of  similar  personal 
addresses.  Of  the  rest  two  deserve  special  notice  —  that  entitled 
Kci/uvoe  or  Kepa/utTc,  a  little  address  of  a  wandering  minstrel  to 
the  potters  as  they  are  putting  their  work  into  the  oven,  praying 
success  for  them  if  they  reward  him,  but  calling  upon  a  strange 
assembly  of  demons,  Sabaktes  and  his  comrades,  Circe  and  the 
Centaurs,  to  spoil  the  work  and  crack  the  ware  if  they  treat  him 
with  stinginess.  The  second,  called  Eip£<nwi/»j,2  is  a  song  of 

Xa\KfT]  irapOtvos  elful,  Mi'5ea>  5'  eirl  (rattan  h-e?uar 
fffr'  &v  vScop  re  ptri,  Kal  SeVSpea  /JLOKpa 
i}f\i6s  r'  avilav  Qaivy,  \afi.irpf)  re  fft\i\vjj, 


ayye\t<i>  ira.piov<ri,  Mi5?js  ori  rfjSe  TtQairrai. 

It  was  by  some  attributed  to  Cleobulus.     It  was  known  to  Simonides,  and 
is   referred  to  by  Plato  (Pkadnts,  p.   264)  as  being    a  sort  of  poetical 
Round,  in  which  the  verses  can  be  transposed  without  spoiling  the  sens  • 
AcJ'ua  irpo<TTpair6fifffff  avSpbs  fifya.  Svvafj.fvoio, 
fcs  fieya  fj.ev  Swarat,  /ue'ya  5e  0pffj.fi  u\fiios  aft. 
aural  avaitXivfaQe  Ovpaf  TT\OVTOS  yap  fffftfftv 
iroAAbs,  ffvv  ir\ovrcp  Sf  Kal  tv<ppo<rvvr\  Tf6a\via, 
fiprjv-il  r  aya6}},  offa.  S'  &yyta,  ^fffra  u.ev  fit], 
Kvpfta'n]  8'  aiel  Kara  Kaptioirov  Zpwoi  jua^a. 


CH.  viil.     FRAGMENTS  OF  POPULAR  SONG.  141 

children  going  from  house  to  house  in  autumn  during  Apollo's 
feast,  and  levying  what  they  can  get,  just  as  poor  children  now  go 
about  on  St.  Stephen's  or  May-day.  As  already  observed,  this 
little  piece  ends  with  iambic  trimeters.  It  was  probably  sung 
at  Samos,  but  its  age  is  unknown.  These  two  poems,  both  in 
the  practices  thej  imply,  and  in  the  superstitions  they  mention, 
give  us  one  of  the  few  glimpses  we  have  into  the  life  of  the 
lower  classes  in  early  times.  They  have  nothing  to  do  with 
Homer  or  with  epic  poetry,  but  as  we  have  no  class  of  poetry 
or  of  literature  where  they  could  find  a  natural  place,  they  may 
still  hold  the  place  assigned  to  them  by  the  ancients,  as  vener- 
able fragments  of  what  the  common  people  sang,  while  the 
rhapsodists  were  reciting  their  refined  epics  at  the  courts  of 
kings  and  nobles. 

§  1  06.  It  may  be  well  finally  to  dispose  in  a  few  words  of  the 
external  history  of  the  collection.  Our  oldest  testimony  to  the 
existence  of  these  Hymns  is  a  citation  by  Thucydides  (iii. 
104)  from  the  first  (to  the  D'elian  Apollo).  His  quotation  is 
remarkable  for  differing  considerably  in  expression,  though 
not  at  all  in  sense,  from  our  MSS.,  so  that  there  appears 
to  have  been  much  liberty  allowed  the  rhapsodists  in  the 
rendering  of  their  texts.  The  historian  goes  on  to  cite  the 
famous  personal  passage  in  which  the  poet  describes  himself 
as  '  the  blind  old  man  of  Chios'  rocky  isle  '  —  a  passage  which 
Thucydides.  and  with  him  all  the  ancients,  considered  as  clear 
proof  of  the  blindness  and  of  the  Chian  parentage  of  Homer. 
Accordingly,  though  seldom  cited  in  antiquity,  the  hymns 
generally  went  under  the  name  of  Homer.  There  seems  to  be 
another  allusion  to  the  same  hymn  in  Aristophanes'  Clsuds, 

roC  TrouSks  5e  710/77  Kara  Si<ppa5a  ^(rerai  ttfJ.fJ.U', 

5'  &£ou<ri  KpaTatiroSfs  ts  T<58e  8<a/j.a' 
8'  iffrbv  vtpaivoi  fir  ij\fKTpCf>  /8e/3aina. 
t  rot,  vtvpai  fi/iavffios,  &ffre  xe\i8cav 
K  fv  irpoQvpois,  »J/iA/>j  TroSas'  oAAa  <pep'  dlfya. 


fl  fJL^v  TI  Suffets'  ft  5e  fj.)],  ov%  fffT'f)£o[t.cv' 
oil  yap  (jwoiKTjcroj'Tes  «y0o5'  fj\0ou,tv. 


T42  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  VIII. 

and  to  the  Pythian  or  second  hymn  in  the  Knights  (v.  1015), 
where  he  quotes  (apparently)  v.  265  ' ;  but  after  his  day,  the  first 
allusions,  and  those  indirect,  appear  in  a  corresponding  hymn 
of  Callimachus,  and  a  note  of  Antigonus  Carystius  about  lyre 
strings.  Though  five  or  six  scholia,  gathered  from  the  Iliad, 
Pindar,  and  Aristophanes,  allude  to  them,  we  do  not  possess  a 
single  remark  upon  them  directly  ascribed  to  the  great  Alexan- 
drian critics.  Diodorus  quotes  the  hymns  generally  as  Homer's, 
and  so  does  Philodemus,  in  one  of  the  recovered  Herculanean 
fragments.  Pausanias  also  speaks  of  Homer's  hymns  generally, 
but  specially  cites  that  to  the  Delian  Apollo,  that  to  the  Pythian, 
and  that  to  Demeter.  Athenseus  cites  the  Hymn  to  Apollo, 
but  hesitates  about  its  authorship.  The  scholiast  on  Pindar 
ascribes  it  to  Kinsethon  of  Chios.  Suidas  and  the  Lives  of 
Herodotus  and  Homer  ascribe  them  without  criticism  to 
Homer. 

Thus  we  find  almost  no  quotations  from  them  in  antiquity. 
There  is  very  seldom  a  reference  to  any  other  hymn  but  that 
to  the  Delian  Apollo.  Yet  about  the  first  century  B.C.  we  find 
the  Hymns  of  Homer  mentioned,  and  Pausanias  seems  specially 
acquainted  with  that  to  Demeter.  The  authors  of  good  Greek 
scholia  cite  them,  and  then  we  lose  all  trace  of  them  till  the 
time  of  Suidas. 

§  107.  Bibliographical.  Our  extant  MSS.  are  late,  none  of 
them  earlier  than  the  fourteenth  century.  Of  these  the  most  re- 
markable is  that  found  at  Moscow  by  Matthiae  in  1 780,  and  now 
at  Leyden,  for  it  contains  at  the  opening  a  fragment  to  Diony- 
sus, and  next  the  famous  Hymn  to  Demeter,  not  elsewhere  pre- 
served. Nevertheless,  our  best  authority,  Baumeister,  prefers 
the  Laurentian  codex  (Plut.  xxxii.  45),  of  about  the  same  date, 
for  purity  of  text  and  general  merit.  All  the  extant  MSS.  seem 
taken  from  one  older  copy,  now  lost ;  but  the  Moscow  copy 
was  written  by  a  more  learned  scribe  than  the  rest,  and  there- 
fore more  seriously  interpolated  and  emended.  The  archetype 
was  already  damaged,  as  is  shown  by  the  short  fragment  of  the 
Hymn  to  Dionysus,  with  which  the  Moscow  codex  opens.  But, 

1  v-  575>  where  Homer  is  said  to  have  represented  Iris  winged  ;  cf. 
the  schol.  on  the  line,  who  refers  to  the  Hymns. 


CH.  Vlll.  EDITIONS  OF   THE  HYMNS.  143 

before  it  was  again  copied  by  the  writers  of  our  other  codices, 
it  had  lost  several  more  of  the  early  pages,  which  contained  the 
Hymn  to  Demeter.  From  the  mistakes  made  in  our  MSS.  we 
can  infer  that  even  their  archetype  was  not  very  old,  and 
certainly  not  written  in  capitals.  They  were  first  printed  at 
Florence  in  1488  in  Demetrius'  Chalcondylas'  editio  princeps 
of  Homer.  Then  follow  H.  Stephens,  Joshua  Barnes,  and  the 
Epistola  critica  of  D.  Ruhnken  (1749).  After  the  discovery  of 
the  Moscow  codex  (now  Leidensis),  we  have,  among  others, 
editions  by  F.  A.  Wolf  (Halle,  1796),  by  Ilgen,  a  very  complete 
book,  by  Matthise,  Godf.  Hermann,  and  Franke,  almost  all  with 
the  Batrachomyomachia  and  Trifles  ;  lastly,  and  most  conveni- 
ently, the  Hymns  alone  with  commentary  by  A.  Baumeistei 
(Lips.  1860),  who  has  also  revised  the  text  in  the  Teubnei 
series.  Of  translations  I  only  know  the  old  one  of  Chapman 
(reprinted  1858),  of  course  without  the  hymn  to  Demeter ; 
but  this  latter  has  suggested  to  Mr.  Swinburne  one  of  his  fines' 
Poems  and  Ballads. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

THE   LATER   HISTORY  OF   EPIC  POETRY.1 

§  1 08.  WITH  the  so-called  cyclic  poets,  the  natural  course 
of  epic  poetry  had  reached  the  close  of  its  development  Other 
species  of  poetry  arose  and  satisfied  the  wants  of  a  newer  age. 
The  historical  sense  of  the  Greeks,  late  in  growth  and  slow 
in  development,  at  last  substituted  prose  narrative  of  real 
facts  for  the  poetical  treatment  of  myths.  Nevertheless,  the 
unsurpassed  greatness  of  the  old  masterpieces  perpetually 
tempted  men  of  learning  and  refinement  to  try  a  new  develop- 
ment on  these  models,  which  had  shown  a  sustained  grandeur 
that  no  succeeding  form  or  metre  could  ever  attain.  But  all 
these  attempts  were,  nationally  speaking,  complete  failures, 
though  some  of  them  which  remain  delight  us  by  their  beauty 
and  the  elegance  of  their  execution.2  They  were  in  an- 
cient days  the  study  of  the  learned  few,  in  later  the  arena  for 
displaying  grammatical  accuracy  and  artificial  culture.  Even 

1  This  chapter  offers  no  interest  to  the  general  reader,  and  Apollonius 
is  the  only  literary  figure  which  it  contains.     But  some  information  con- 
cerning the  later  epic  poets  may  fairly  be  demanded  by  the  special  student, 
perhaps  even  because  they  are  obscure. 

2  Chcerilus,  in  an  extant  fragment,  probably  from  the  opening  of  his 
Perseis,  states  the  difficulties  of  the  later  epic  poets  with  good  sense  and 
feeling  : — 

7  A  juafcap,  offris  eTjp  Ktivov  xpAvov  fiipis  aoitirjs, 
Moueraaij'  Ofpdirwv,  or'  cucfiparos  ?iv  «TJ  \eifitaf 
vvv  8'  ore  ifivro.  SfSaffrai,  txovffi  5f  irfipara 
vffTaroi  &ffre  5po/j.oi  Ka.Tf\eiir6fi.eff,  oiiSe  try 


CH.  IX.  PISANDER,  ASIUS,  PANYASIS.  145 

in  the  last  agonies  of  expiring  heathenism,  the  school  of  Egypt 
poured  out  its  turbid  utterance  of  mystery  and  magic  in  long 
mythological  epics,  which  are  now  unknown  save  to  the  curious 
student  of  obscure  books.  All  these  epics  are  outside  the 
proper  course  of  the  national  literature  of  Greece,  which  seems 
always  to  have  exhausted  all  the  originality  in  each  kind  of 
writing  before  it  passed  on  to  the  next.  Nor  do  they  fall 
properly  within  the  scope  of  this  book,  which  is  concerned 
with  that  literature  which  was  in  Greece  national,  and  not  the 
heritage  of  the  few.  It  seems  well,  therefore,  to  dispose  of 
them  briefly  here,  in  order  to  write  the  history  of  succeeding 
kinds  of  literature  without  interruption.  Those  who  desire 
full  and  accurate  information  on  this  very  dry  and  unprofitable 
subject  will  do  well  to  consult  the  elaborate  and  unwearied 
work  of  Bernhardy,  who  has  devoted  120  very  long  pages  to  a 
thorough  examination  of  these  poems  and  fragments.1 

§  109.  The  earliest  development  of  this  kind  seems  to  have 
been  in  Asia  Minor  about  a  century  after  the  chief  cyclic  poets, 
and  the  favourite  subject  the  adventures  of  Heracles.  These 
were  specially  treated  in  a  poem  called  Heradda  by  PISANDER  of 
Cameirus,  a  poet  of  early  but  unknown  date,  whose  authority  on 
the  labours  of  Heracles  is  often  invoked,  and  who  was  the  first 
to  arm  him  with  the  club  and  lion's  skin.  Asms  of  Samos 
seems  to  have  been  an  equally  early  genealogical  poet,  who  is 
quoted  by  Duris  as  describing  the  luxury  of  the  lonians  at 
Samos  in  terms  not  unlike  Thucydides'  account  of  the  old 
Athenians.  Athenseus  cites  a  few  comic  lines  from  an  elegy  of 
the  same  poet,  and  Pausanias  refers  to  him  on  obscure  genea- 
logical questions  about  local  heroes.  These  two  poets  are 
generally  placed  much  earlier  than  those  about  to  be  mentioned, 
and  Diibner 2  believes  there  was  a  long  sleep  of  epic  poetry,  till 
the  excitement  of  the  Persian  wars  caused  it  to  wake  up  again. 
Herodorus  of  Heraclea,  though  a  prose  writer,  was  like  them 
in  subjects  and  style. 

PANYASIS,  uncle  of  Herodotus,  a  man  of  political  note 

1  LG.  ii.  r,  pp.  538-458- 

2  In  his  Preface  to  the  Didot  ed.  of  the  Epic  fragments,   following 
Suidas'  t>s  fffaffOflffav 

VOL.  I.— V 


146  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  ix. 

at  Halicarnassus,  where  he  fought  for  the  freedom  of  the  town 
against  the  tyrant  Lygdamis,  gained  a  good  deal  of  temporary 
celebrity  by  another  Heradcia,  in  fourteen  books.  Consider- 
able fragments  of  a  social  nature  are  quoted  from  it  by  Stobseus 
and  Athenaeus,  which  specially  refer  to  the  use  and  abuse  of 
wine-drinking.  They  are  elegantly  written,  and  remind  us 
strongly  of  the  elegiac  fragments  on  the  same  subject  by  Xeno- 
phanes  and  Theognis.  He  was  also,  according  to  Suidas, 
author  of  elegiac  poems,  in  six  books,  called  lonica,  on  the  anti- 
quities of  Athens,  and  especially  on  the  Ionic  migration.  This 
work  was  not  without  influence  on  his  nephew  Herodotus. 

His  younger  contemporary,  ANTIMACHUS  of  Colophon, 
lived  up  to  the  end  of  the  Poloponnesian  War  as  a  very  old 
man,  and  has  been  already  mentioned  (p.  31)  as  one  of  the 
learned  critics  who  published  a  special  edition  of  Homer, 
quoted  in  the  Venetian  scholia.  His  great  interest  in  Homer 
led  him  to  attempt  a  learned  and  scholastic  imitation  (for 
original  genius  he  had  none)  in  a  very  long  and  tedious 
Thebais.  His  Lyde,  an  elegiac  poem,  does  not  belong  to 
the  present  chapter.  He  is  said  by  Plutarch,  in  a  suspicious 
anecdote  ( Vit.  Lys.  12),  to  have  contended  for  a  prize  in  a 
laudatory  poem  on  Lysander,  and,  being  defeated,  to  have  de- 
stroyed the  poem.  But  Plato,  he  adds,  being  then  young  and  a 
personal  admirer  of  Antimachus,  consoled  him  with  animad- 
verting on  the  blindness  of  his  critics.  Plato  is  further  said  to 
have  wished  for  a  collection  of  his  poems.  Hadrian  preferred 
him  to  Homer,  and  introduced  him  to  notice  after  he  had  long 
been  forgotten.  It  was  left  for  Mr.  Paley  to  tell  us  that  the  little- 
noticed  edition  of  Antimachus,  the  friend  and  contemporary  of 
Plato,  was  perhaps  the  first  publication  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
in  their  present  form  !  The  extant  fragments  of  Antimachus 
with  other  epic  poets  are  collected  with  care  by  Diibner 
at  the  end  of  the  Hesiod  in  the  Didot  collection.  They 
have  no  literary  interest,  being  chiefly  citations  to  explain  ob- 
scure words,  which  he  affected,  obscure  myths,  which  he  illus- 
trated or  narrated,  or  lastly,  phrases  either  borrowed  from 
Homer,  or  contrary  to  Homeric  use.  The  Alexandrian  critics 
constantly  quote  him,  and  greatly  admired  him,  and  he  may 


CH.  ix.  ANTIMACHUS,  CHCERILUS.  147 

fairly  be  regarded  the  model  or  master  of  the  Alexandrian  epic 
poets.  This  did  not  save  him  from  the  criticism  and  ridicule 
of  Callimachus.  Quintilian1  speaks  of  him  as  being  indeed 
generally  thought  by  the  learned  as  second  to  Homer,  but  as 
second  by  an  enormous  interval.  Plutarch,  in  his  tract  on 
Talkativeness,  gives  an  amusing  example  of  a  babbler  flooding 
the  man  who  asks  him  a  question  with  his  answer,  which 
comprises  a  whole  history,  '  especially  if  he  have  read  Anti- 
machus  of  Colophon.' 

CHCERILUS  (of  Samos  also),  a  younger  contemporary  of 
Herodotus,  and  said  by  Plutarch  to  have  been  intimate  with 
Lysander,  is  remarkable  for  having  attempted  a  great  novelty 
— to  relate  in  the  epic  form  the  very  subject  with  which 
Herodotus  founded  Greek  history.  His  Pcrseis  sang  tht 
struggle  of  Hellenedom  with  Persia.  Its  style  is  said  to  have 
been  less  artificial  than  that  of  Antimachus,  who  was  his  rival  in 
the  estimation  of  the  learned.  Only  three  fragments  of  interest 
are  left  us  from  this  poet,  that  above  cited,  then  his  description 
of  the  Jews  in  the  army  of  Xerxes — an  inaccurate  picture, 
but  very  interesting  from  its  early  date — and  lastly  a  striking 
sentence,  supposed  to  be  spoken  by  Xerxes  after  his  defeat.2 
If  a  judgment  upon  such  scanty  evidence  were  allowable,  I 
should  be  disposed  to  agree  with  the  minority,  who  placed  him 
above  Antimachus. 

§  no.  These  three  authors,  together  with  the  older  Asius 
and  Pisander,  are  the  obscure  representatives  of  the  Greek 
epic  poetry  down  to  the  Alexandrian  period,  when  there  was 
larger  room  for  literary  revivals,  as  the  original  genius  of 
the  nation  was  exhausted.  Accordingly,  the  only  later  epic 
which  has  ever  enjoyed  any  real  celebrity  is  the  Argonautica 
of  the  Alexandrian  ApOLLONius,3  commonly  called  the  Rhodian, 

1  x.  I,  §  53,  Plutarch  de  Garr.  cap.  xxi. 

Xepfflv  5'  uA/8oj/  ex«,  KV\IKOS  rpvtyes  dyU.<J>ts  eay6s, 
avSptav  Sairv/j.6vcav  va.va.yiov,  old.  re  TroAAa 
•jrvtv/j.a  Aitavvffoio  Trpbs"Tftpios  e/c/JaAec  d/cray. 

8  Rhianus,  the  editor  of  Hi.mer,  and  contemporary  of  Eratosthenes, 
was  the  author  of  several  voluminous  epics,  from  one  of  which,  the  Mes~ 
seniaca,  Pausanias  quotes  the  romantic  legends  concerning  Aristomenes, 
the  great  Messenian  hero. 


148  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  rx. 

from  his  long  residence  and  citizenship  there.  He  was  a  pupil 
of  the  famous  Callimachus,  afterwards  his  bitterest  opponent 
on  aesthetic  questions,  and  hence  his  personal  enemy,  on  whom 
Callimachus  wrote  a  bitter  libel,  the  Ibis.1  Ultimately  he  suc- 
ceeded Eratosthenes  as  librarian  in  Alexandria.  Apollonius, 
indeed,  deserves  more  than  a  passing  notice.  The  aspect  of 
criticism  has  veered  constantly  as  regards  him,  nor  can  his  posi- 
tion be  yet  considered  finally  determined.  For,  on  the  one 
hand,  we  find  a  good  many  enthusiastic  admirers,  especially 
among  older  scholars,  who  see  in  him  a  man  of  genius,  and  in 
his  poems  not  only  a  revival  of  an  old  and  splendid  style,  but 
a  revival  with  distinct  and  original  features.  By  them  he  is 
praised  as  one  of  the  greatest  lights  in  Greek  literature.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  general  neglect  of  later  critics,  backed  by 
that  of  our  classical  public,  consigns  him  to  that  oblivion  in 
which  all  Alexandrian  work,  except  that  of  Theocritus,  has  lain 
during  the  present  century.2  This  judgment  is  so  completely 
based  upon  neglect,  not  upon  critical  censure,  that  we  may  well 
hesitate  to  endorse  it,  and  may  turn  to  a  brief  examination  of  a 
work  once  so  famous,  and  so  largely  commented  on  in  the  days 
of  the  scholiasts,  but  which  is  now  almost  a  novelty  to  the 
majority  of  our  scholars. 

The  poem  3  opens  with  a  catalogue  of  the  heroes,  and  a  very 
picturesque  description  of  their  departure,  amid  the  tears  and 
sympathy  of  their  relations  (i.  247,  sq.).  It  then  proceeds 
to  narrate  their  various  adventures  on  the  journey.  The 
writing  is  simple,  and  little  ornamented,  as  if  the  poet's 
main  object  had  been  to  record  geographical  and  mythical 
lore,  and  not  to  fascinate  the  reader  by  his  fancy.  There  are 
few  and  short  digressions  throughout  the  work,  too  few,  indeed, 
for  an  epic  on  the  old  model.  The  more  ornate  passages 
in  the  first  book  are  the  descriptions  of  the  song  of  Or- 

1  Cf.  Mr.  Ellis's  learned  article  on  this  quarrel  in  the  Academy  for  Aug. 
30,  1879. 

2  The  same  variance  of  opinion  existed  of  old,  while  Virgil  must  have 
greatly  admired  him,  and  Varro  Atacinus  translated  him ;  Quintilian  speaks 
of  his  poem  as  non  contemnendum  opus  tzquali  quadam  mediocritate. 

3  It  is  arranged  in  four  books,  but  each  of  them  so  long  as  to  equal  two 
books  of  Homer.    The  whole  amounts  to  some  5,800  lines. 


CH.  IX.  THE  ARGONAUT1CA.  149 

pheus,  which  is  justly  described  as  Theogonic  in  character, 
of  the  cloak  of  Jason,  and  lastly  some  similes  which  are  not 
very  apt  (as  the  scholiasts  note),  except  a  very  fine  one  compar- 
ing Heracles,  when  he  hears  of  the  loss  of  Hylas,  to  a  bull 
maddened  by  a  gadfly.1  It  may,  indeed,  be  here  remarked  that 
the  poet's  similes  are  rather  introduced  for  their  prettiness  than 
for  their  aptness,  and  that  when  he  expands  one  taken  from 
Homer  (as  in  ii.  543,  sq.)  he  does  not  improve  it. 

In  the  second  book,  which  continues  the  adventures  of  the 
Argo,  the  description  of  the  miseries  of  Phineus  is  very  in- 
teresting, as  is  also  the  stirring  account  of  the  passage  of  the 
Symplegades.  Various  curious  notices,  such  as  that  of  the 
'  black  country '  of  the  Chalybes  and  the  couvade  of  the  Tiba- 
reni,2  maintain  our  interest,  which  is,  however,  the  same  kind  of 
interest  as  that  excited  by  Xenophon's  prose  narrative  on  the 
same  topics  towards  the  close  of  his  Anabasis. 

In  the  third  book  we  are  introduced  to  the  second  great 
subject,  which  is  combined  with  the  adventures  of  the  Argo- 
nauts— the  passion  of  Medea.  It  is  this  intensely  dramatic  ele- 
ment which  gives  the  poem  its  main  value,  and  is  an  unique 
phenomenon  in  old  Greek  epic  literature.  This  book  is  so 
vastly  superior  to  all  the  rest,  that  we  at  once  suspect  the 
existence  of  some  great  model,  from  which  Apollonius  must 
have  copied  his  great  and  burning  scenes.  But  we  look  in  vain 
through  scholiasts  and  older  poets  for  such  a  model.  Sophocles' 
Colchians,  which  were  on  this  subject,  certainly  did  not  make 
the  psychological  drawing  of  Medea  prominent,  or  we  must 
have  heard  it  from  the  commentators  either  on  Apollonius, 
or  on  Euripides'  Medea.  This  latter  picture  is  quite  distinct 
from  that  of  Apollonius,  and  he  has  not  borrowed  from  it. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  sort  of  modernness,  a  minuteness  of  psycho- 
logical analysis  in  Apollonius,  which  we  seek  in  vain  even  in 
Euripides,  the  most  advanced  of  the  classical  poets.  The 
scene  where  Medea  determines  in  her  agony  to  commit  suicide, 
but  recoils  with  the  reaction  of  a  strong  youthful  nature  from 
death,  is  the  ancient  parallel,  if  not  the  prototype,  of  the 

1  496,  sq.,  vv.  721-68,  and  vv.  1265,  sq. 

2  178,  sq.,  and  especially  vv.  305-6,  551,  sq.,  v.  1002. 


ISO  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  IX. 

splendid  scene  near  the  opening  of  Goethe's  Faust,  and  is  well 
worth  reading.1 

It  is  very  strange  that  the  third  book  of  the  Argonautica 
has  not  maintained  a  high  place  in  public  esteem.  Adverse 
critics  note  that  the  character  of  Jason  fades  out  before  the 
stronger  Medea,  and  that  he  is  the  prototype  of  Virgil's  ^Enear  2 

1  VH  Kal  <pcapia/j.bv  pertKiaOfv,  rj  evi  iroAAo 
<t>dp/J.aica  ol  TO  p.lv  f<r6\a,  TO,  8e  paurriipi  eKeiro. 
fvOf/j-fvi)  S"  tirl  yovvar'  oHvpero.  Seve  8e  K<$Arroi/s 
aAAT)/CTOj/  SaKpvoiffi,  TO  8'  eppeev  aorayes  auras, 
aiv  o\o(pvpofj.evr)s  rbv  tbv  fj.6pov.  "fro  8*  j}  ye 
<pdp/j.a.Ka  Ae|a(r0ai  6vfj,o<p9opa,  rotypa  iraaano. 
^Srj  Kal  Sffffiovs  a.vt\vtTO  <j)capia/J.oio, 

f£t\ffiv  /J.ffj.av7a  5vardfi/.LOpos. — aAAo  ol  &<pvu 
$t"i/jC  oAobj'  ffrvyfpoto  Kara,  (pptvas  $\ff  'AiSao, 
(ffXfTO  8'  afj.<paffir]  tiripbv  xpovov,  a.fj.<t>l  Sf  tracrat 
Su/iTjSeTs  pioroio  fj.e\tjS6v(s  lvSd\\ovro. 
fj.vi]ffaro  fj.tv  rtpirviav,  off'  tvl  faoiffi  vf \ovrai, 
fj.v-ficraff  6/j.i)\iKir]s  irepiyTriQfOS,  old  re  Kovpij  • 
Kal  Tf  ol  rj(\ios  yXvKliav  yevfr'  eivopdavOat 
$1  irdpos,  el  fTfov  ye  v6(p  fire/j.al(ff  fKaffra. 
Kal  rty  fj.€V  pa.  ird\tv  ff<pfTfpo>v  airoKdrOero  yoweav, 
"Hprjs  fvvefflriffi  fAfTarpoiros,  ouS'  eri  jSouAas 
a\\r)  8otd£tffKev  •  eeASero  81  ol^/a  fyavriva. 
i)w  T(\\o(j,fvi)i>,  tva  ol  6f \KT-fipia  Soil} 
<f>dp/j.aKa  o-vv6ffflriffi  Kal  avr^fffifv  fS  wirfiv. 
irvKva.  8'  ava.  /cAr/i'Sos  klav  \vfffKe  Bvpdcav, 
ai-yArjj'  (TKeirTOfi.ein)'  TTJ  8'  acnrdinov  y3aAe  Qtyyos 
'Hpiyevfys,  K'IVVVTO  8'  ava  Trro\if0pov  eKaarot. 
Other  remarkable  passages  are  vv.  615,  sq.,  and  961-71. 
e'/c  8'  apa  ol  Kpatiti]  <rrri6fiav  ireffev,  6fj.fJ.ara  8"  OUTWJ 
flXXvffav  •  6ep/jibi>  Se  iraprftSas  el\tv  tpfvOos. 
yovvara  8'  O£»T'  oviffw  o&re  wpoirdpoidei/  aeipai 
fffdevev,  oAA*  virtvepde  irdyn  v65as.  al  8'  apa  reius 
a/j.(f>liro\oi  /j.d\a  iracrot  airb  o~(ptioiv  e\lacrdev. 
TO).  8'  avetf  Kal  avavSoi  fQeffraffav  etAA^AoiO'iJ', 
^  Spvffly  t)  paKpriffiv  eeiStfyievoj  eAoTpcrtJ', 
o^Te  irapaffffov  e/cjjAoi  ev  ovptffiv  tppifavrai 
vi)V€[j,lTi '  fj.era  8'  oSTJS  inrb  pittas  avefioio 
Kivvfj-fvai  dfidSriffav  airftpirov  '  &s  apa  rdi  ye 
jUeAAof  aAis  (p6(y£aff0ai  vwb  irvoirtviv  'EpaiToy. 

2  Indeed  Virgil's  obligations  to    Apollonius  may  be  traced  on  every 
page  of  the  yEneid. 


CH.  ix.  THE  ARGONAUTICA.  151 

but  this  tradition  was  already  established  by  Euripides  in  his 
Medea. 

The  fourth  book  returns  to  the  fabulous  adventures  of  the 
heroes,  during  which  Medea  only  appears  occasionally,  and 
generally  as  supplicating  their  sympathy  or  reproaching  them 
for  their  coldness  in  protecting  her  from  the  pursuit  of  her  father. 
But  the  main  interest  to  modern  readers  is  gone.  The  poet 
often  lets  his  own  person  appear,  and  even  once  apologises  for 
telling  an  improbable  myth.1  Two  picturesque  scenes,  the  play- 
ing of  Eros  and  Ganymede,  and  the  description  of  the  Hesperides 
with  the  wounded  dragon,2  are  evidently  drawn  from  celebrated 
pictures,  or,  as  some  think,  from  groups  of  statuary.  The 
frequent  breaking  off  with  '  why  should  I  pursue  the  subject 
further,'  or  some  such  excuse,  also  points  to  the  modern  condi- 
tion of  the  poet,  encumbered  with  an  endless  store  of  traditions. 
His  slightly  veiled  scepticism  produces  a  similar  impression. 

§  in.  Bibliographical.  As  to  MSS.,the  principal  one,  which 
far  exceeds  all  the  rest  in  value,  is  in  that  most  famous  of  all 
books,  the  Plut.  xxxii.  9,  of  the  Laurentian  library  at  Florence, 
which  contains  a  copy  of  the  tenth  century,  along  with  the 
equally  invaluable  MSS.  of  ./Eschylus  and  Sophocles.  There 
are  twenty-five  others  known,  at  the  Vatican,  at  Paris,  and  else- 
where. But  all  critical  work  must  depend  upon  the  Medicean 
codex.  From  it  the  editio princeps  of  Lascaris  (in  capital  letters, 
Florence,  1496)  was  prepared,  the  Aldine  (Venet.  1521)  from 
the  three  Vatican  MSS.  Then  comes  the  edition  of  Stephanus. 
There  are,  besides,  editions  by  Brunck,  Shaw  (Oxon.  1777), 
and  Schaefer.  The  newer  are  Wellauer's  text,  scholia  and 
complete  indices  (Leipsig,  1828),  Lehrs'  (with  Hesiod,  &c. 
ed.  Didot),  Merkel's  critical  text  (in  Teubner's  series,  1872), 
and  Keil  and  Merkel's  edition  in  1854,  with  critical  notes, 
and  all  the  scholia — a  fine  book.  In  all  these  editions  the 
Greek  scholia  form  the  most  important  element.  Those  of 
the  Florentine  MS.  arc  very  old  and  valuable,  and  are  said  at 
the  end  of  the  book  to  be  selected  from  Lucillus  Tarrseus, 
Sophocles,  and  Theon.  These  men's  notes  are  chiefly  on 
mythological  lore,  but  also  give  many  valuable  explanations, 
1  iv.  1379.  2  iii.  114,  sq.,  and  iv.  1395,  sq. 


152  HISTORY   OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  ix. 

and,  especially  on  the  first  book,  cite  the  version  of  the  poet's 
earlier  edition  which  was  then  still  extant.  They  criticise  the 
speeches  from  a  rhetorical  aspect,  and  occasionally  censure  the 
similes,  which  they  analyse  with  prosaic  accuracy.  Perhaps 
the  most  curious  point  in  them  is  their  frequent  objecting  to 
the  poet's  use  of  pronominal  adjectives,  which  they  roundly 
(and  I  think  rightly)  assert  he  did  not  understand.1  The 
Paris  MSS.  contain  a  great  many  grammatical  additions  of 
later  date.  There  are  said  to  be  three  English  translations, 
by  Favvkes,  Greene  (1780),  and  Preston  (1803),  none  of  which 
I  have  been  able  to  find.  They  have  fallen  into  such  oblivion 
as  to  be  now  rare,  even  in  large  libraries. 

§  1 1 2.  I  know  not  whether  it  is  worth  wearying  the  reader  with 
the  later  history  of  epic  poetry.  But  as  this  obscure  and  feeble 
after-growth  will  give  some  idea  of  the  sort  of  contrast  which 
exists  between  classical  and  post-classical  literature,  I  will  for 
once  inflict  upon  him  a  page  of  names  and  titles.  These  will 
serve  me  as  a  good  apology  for  having  avoided  any  fuller  treat- 
ment of  the  Alexandrian  epoch. 

In  the  age  of  Apollonius,  we  have  the  epic  studies 
among  the  poems  of  Theocritus,  which  have  been  already 
mentioned,  but  they  seem  to  me  more  in  the  style  of  the 
Homeric  Hymns  than  of  the  longer  Homeric  epics.  They  are 
careful  and  very  perfect  studies  by  the  learned  Alexandrian  of 
the  old  epic  style  in  short  and  complete  episodes — in  fact,  idylls 
in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term. 

The  Europe  of  Moschus  (about  3rd  cent  A.D.)  seems  to  be  an 
epic  idyll  of  the  same  kind,  of  great  elegance  and  finish,  but 
with  the  erotic  element  more  prominent  than  would  have  been 
natural  to  the  real  epic  age.  The  description  of  the  basket  of 
Europe  (vv.  37-63)  is  elaborated  almost  like  that  of  the  shields 
of  Achilles  and  Heracles,  and  perhaps  marks  the  contrast 
in  the  old  and  the  new  epic  significantly  enough.  In  the 
same  category  may  be  classed  the  Megara,  or  dialogue,  of 
125  lines,  between  Megara  and  Alcmene,  concerning  the  absent 
Heracles,  which  is  attributed  to  the  same  poet.  This  poem, 
like  most  of  the  short  epic  fragments  of  the  Alexandrian  epoch, 
1  Cf.  schol.  on  ii.  544 ;  iii.  186,  395,  600,  795  ;  iv.  1327. 


CH.  IX.     QUINTUS,  TRYPHIODORUS,  NONNUS.  153 

is  not  a  whole  in  itself,  but  a  sort  of  fragment,  as  it  were, 
intended  for  a  longer  poem.  This  Megara  ends  with 
the  dream  related  by  Alcmene,  which  evidently  portends  the 
death  of  Heracles.  These  somewhat  monotonous  but  elegant 
exercises  will  be  most  easily  consulted  in  Ahrens'  Bucolid 
(Teubner,  1875),  where,  however,  too  many  of  the  Theocritean 
collection  are  called  spurious,  and  printed  at  the  end  of  the 
volume. 

§  113.  From  this  period  onward  there  is  a  long  gap  in  our 
epic  records,  though  we  know  that  sophists  and  grammarians 
paid  much  attention  to  this  style,  and  that  the  Indian  adventures 
of  Alexander  gave  rise  to  a  taste  for  Indian  and  other  Orien- 
tal fables,  and  especially  descriptions  of  the  Indian  adven- 
tures of  Bacchus.  But  we  find  no  enduring  result  till  the 
beginning  of  the  fifth  century,  when  an  epic  school  was  founded, 
principally  in  Upper  Egypt,  and  of  whom  two  representatives 
are  well  known— -Nonnus  and  Musseus.  There  are  several 
others  mentioned  in  the  fuller  literature  of  the  time.  First, 
Quintus  Smyrnseus  (called  Calaber,  from  the  finding  there  of 
the  MS.),  who  wrote  a  continuation  of  Homer  in  fourteen 
books,  thus  taking  up  the  work  of  the  cyclic  poets,  who  were 
probably  lost  before  his  time.  Then  Tryphiodorus,  who  wrote 
an  Odyssey  and  an  extant  Capture  of  Troy,  in  some  700 
lines,  and  Colluthus,  who  wrote  a  Rape  of  Helen.  These 
latter  were  Egyptians,  and  lived  in  the  fifth  or  sixth  century. 
They  can  be  conveniently  studied  in  the  Didot  collection, 
in  which  they  are  all  printed  after  Hesiod.1  But  these 
works  are  not  worth  describing.  Nonnus  only,  standing 
between  the  living  and  the  dead,  composing,  on  the  one  hand, 
his  long  epic  on  the  adventures  of  Dionysus,  and,  on  the  other, 
his  paraphrase  of  St.  John's  Gospel  into  Homeric  hexameters, 
is  a  most  interesting  figure,  though  beyond  the  scope  of  the 
historian  of  Greek  classical  literature.  Even  the  life  of  Christ 

1  Before  the  publication  of  this  most  useful  volume  (edited  by  F.  S. 
Lehrs  and  Diibner),  the  later  epics,  and  the  fragments  of  the  earlier,  were 
very  inaccessible,  and  only  to  be  found  in  old  uncritical  or  stray  modern 
editions.  Most  unaccountably,  the  epic  of  Nonnus  is  excluded  from  this 
otherwise  complete  collection,  which  includes  even  Tzetzes. 


154  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  IX. 

was  put  together  in  Homeric  hexameters,  called  Centoncs 
Ilomerici,  which  were  attributed  to  the  Empress  Eudocia,  and 
thought  worthy  of  being  printed  by  Aldus  (1501)  and  Stephens 
(1568),  but  apparently  as  Christian  literature. 

The  Hero  and  Lcander  of  Musaeus  has,  perhaps,  maintained 
a  higher  place  and  greater  popularity  than  any  of  the  poems  of 
this  later  age,  and  deserves  it  from  the  exceeding  sweetness  and 
pathos  of  both  style  and  story.  But  it  is  hard  to  find  a  reader 
who  has  ever  seen  the  original,  though  it  has  been  immortalised 
by  Byron  in  his  Bride  of  Abydos,^.^  thus  kept  alive  in  modern 
memories. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   RISE   OF   PERSONAL  POETRY  AMONG  THE  GREEKS. 

§  114.  THERE  is  a  sort  of  general  impression  produced  by 
the  marked  divisions  of  Greek  Literature  in  our  handbooks,  that 
the  newer  kinds  of  poetry  did  not  arise  till  the  epic  had  decayed, 
and  that  this  latter  quickly  disappeared  before  the  splendour 
and  variety  of  the  new  development.  This  is  a  great  mistake. 
The  most  celebrated  and  popular  of  the  cyclic  poets  were  either 
contemporary  with,  or  even  subsequent  to,  the  greatest  iambic 
and  elegiac  poets,  and  the  revival  of  epic  poetry  about  the 
time  of  the  Persian  wars,  and  again  at  Alexandria,  proves  how 
deep  and  universal  a  hold  it  maintained  upon  the  Greek  mind. 
Nevertheless,  after  the  opening  of  the  seventh  century  B.C.  it 
ceased  to  supply  the  spiritual  wants  of  the  Greeks  of  Asia 
Minor.  No  successor  worthy  of  the  poets  of  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  had  arisen,  and  the  Greek  public  were  not  satisfied 
with  the  perpetual  recitation  of  these  old  masterpieces.  They 
were  still  less  attracted  by  long  mythical  histories  in  epic  verse, 
which  pretended  to  be  epic  poems,  but  missed  the  tragic  unity 
necessary  to  interest  the  hearer,  and  seemed  rather  designed  to 
instruct  the  calm  reader  in  mythical  lore  than  to  satisfy  the 
longings  of  the  heart,  or  feed  its  emotions.  While,  therefore, 
epic  poetry  was  making  no  advance,  the  social  and  political  deve- 
lopment of  the  Asiatic  Greeks  was  growing  with  giant  strides. 
Contact  with  the  old  Empires  of  the  East  gave  them  material 
culture,  while  traffic  with  barbarians  brought  them  wealth  to 
carry  out  their  ideas.  Perpetual  conflicts,  and  fusions  of  classes, 
and  adventures  of  war  and  of  travel — in  the  Odyssey  still  the 
appanage  of  kings — brought  out  the  feeling  of  personality,  of 


i56  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  x. 

self-importance  in  the  poorer  classes,  and  this  feeling  could  not 
but  find  its  expression  in  popular  poetry. 

We  cannot  sever  the  poets  of  this  age  according  to  their 
metres,  for  they  almost  all  used  various  metres  indifferently ; 
nor  even  according  to  their  dialect,  for  this  often  varied 
with  the  metre  ;  nor  does  Melic  poetry  stand  in  any  real  con- 
trast (as  to  content)  with  elegiac  and  iambic.  The  division 
which  I  desire  to  follow  is,  first,  subjective  or  personal  poetry, 
including  the  early  elegiac,  iambic,  trochaic,  and  such  like 
verse,  also  those  more  strictly  lyric  poems  which  are  called 
yEolic,  and  in  which  Alcseus  or  Sappho  sang  their  personal  joys 
and  griefs  ;  secondly,  public  or  choral  poetry — in  this  age 
always  lyric,  which  consisted  of  those  hymns  to  the  gods,  or 
processional  odes,  or  songs  of  victory  which  were  of  public  sig- 
nificance, and  into  which  the  poet  only  accidentally  introduced 
his  personality.  These  public  poems  were  not  at  first  com- 
posed by  special  bards,  but  as  schools  and  tendencies  became 
fixed  and  developed,  poets  like  Stesichorus  and  Pindar  came  to 
devote  themselves  almost  exclusively  to  this  side. 

§  115.  As  I  have  already  explained  (p.  4),  short  lyrical  effu- 
sions were  never  wanting  among  the  Greeks,  and  irregular  or  vary- 
ing metres  were  already  common  among  the  people,  when  the 
long  pompous  hexameter  was  constructed  by  educated  men,  and 
raised  to  the  universal  form  of  higher  literature.  Short  halting 
rythms  for  fun  and  ridicule,  bold  anapaests  for  war  and  for 
procession — these  were  no  new  inventions  among  the  Greeks. 
Yet  this  in  no  way  detracts  from  the  capital  merit  of  the  great 
man  who  felt  that  epic  poetry  had  exhausted  its  national  his- 
tory, and  that  he  must  seek  among  the  people,  and  among  the 
songs  of  the  people,  the  inspiration  for  a  renovation  of  poetry. 
The  ancients  are  unanimous  about  the  man,  and  fairly  agreed 
as  to  his  date,  which  they  mark  by  the  reign  of  Gyges,  king  of 
Lydia.1  Later  researches  have  brought  the  date  of  Gyges  con- 

1  It  is,  indeed,  fixed  by  his  frag.  25  (ed.  Btrgk,\vhose  Fragg.  Poet.  Lyr. 
I  quote  throughout),  quoted  by  a  scholiast  as  the  earliest  use  of  the  word 
Tvpavvis  : — 

oi7  /J.DI  T&  Tvyeu  TQV  iro\vxpvffov  ;ueA.et, 

ouS'  fl\e  viii  fae  £n\os,  oir5'  ayaiofj-at 

6eS>v  fpya,  /j.eyd\rts  8'  OVK  eptu  rvpavviSos' 

a.ir6irpodfv  yap  ecmv  6< 


CH.  x.  ARCHILOCHUS.  157 

siderably  below  700  B.C.,1  so.  that  while  Hesiod  was  in  the 
poor  and  backward  parts  of  central  Greece  modifying,  with 
timid  hand,  the  tone  and  style  of  epic  poetry,  without  aban- 
doning its  form,  ARCHILOCHUS,  storm-tost  amid  wealth  and 
poverty,  amid  commerce  and  war,  amid  love  and  hate,  ever  in 
exile  and  yet  everywhere  at  home  —  Archilochus  broke  alto- 
gether with  the  traditions  of  literature,  and  colonised  new  terri- 
tories with  his  genius. 

The  remaining  fragments  show  us  that  he  used  all  kinds  of 
metre  —  elegiac,  iambic,  trochaic  and  irregular  lyric.  He  is  often 
said  to  have  invented  iambic  and  elegiac  verse.  But  we  know 
that  older  poems,  such  as  the  Margites,  contained  iambics,  and 
this  verse  seems  associated  from  the  beginning  with  the  feasts 
of  Demeter,2  who  was  specially  worshipped  at  Paros,  where 
Archilochus  was  born.  And  no  doubt  all  the  other  metres  he 
used,  though  improved  and  perfected  by  his  genius,  were  known 
among  the  people. 

One  of  them,  however,  deserves  special  mention,  because 
even  the  ancients  felt  an  interest  about  its  origin  —  the  so-called 
elegiac.  The  word  e'Xeyoc  (tXeyeloi')  can  hardly  be  originally  a 
Greek  word,  and  seems  of  Phrygian  derivation.  It  was  applied 
in  early  times  to  a  melody  of  plaintive  character  on  the 
Phrygian  flute,  whether  with  or  without  a  song  is  uncertain. 
The  old  shepherd's  pipe  (vvpiyt)  seems  to  have  been  sup- 


Archilochus  further  mentions  the  devastation  of  Magnesia  by  the  Kim- 
merians.  The  evidence  is  summed  up  by  Susemihl  in  a  learned  note  to 
his  translation  of  Aristotle's  Politics  (vol.  ii.  p.  185). 

1  Cf.  Gelzer's  curious  paper  Das  Zeitalter  dcs  Gyges,  who  fixes  his  reign 
at  687-53  B-c-  ty  references  to  him  in  Assyrian  inscriptions. 

3  This  is  described  in  the  legend  as  the  cheering  of  the  sad  goddess  by 
the  maid  lambe  and  her  coarse  wit.  Cf.  Hymn  to  Demeter  t  v.  199,  sq.  :  — 

ovSe  TIV'  O!JT'  tirei  irpoffirriiffffero  afire  ri  fpyy 
aAA'  ayf\affros,  Hiraffros  fSr/rvos  r;5e  irorrjros, 
TJITTO,  itoQ(f  /j.ivvdova'a  I3a0v£iivoio  Ovyarpbs, 
TTpiv  y'  Sre  Srj  xtevys  /JLIV  sldfj.$T]  KfSv  flSvta, 
TroAAa  irapaffKcaTrrovo"'  erptyaro  Tr6rviav,  ayv^v, 
(jieiSriffai  yeXaffcu  re  Kal  'l\aov  <T)(jtiv  6v/j.6y 
?)  5);  ol  Kal  eireira  fJLfBvffrepov  (va.b~tv  opydii 


1 53  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  x. 

planted  by  this  better  instrument  (ai/Xoc),1  made  of  reeds, 
which  is  alluded  to  in  the  marriage  scene  in  Iliad  2,  and  in  the 
description  of  the  Muses  in  the  Hymn  to  Hermes.  But  the 
name  elegy  was  gradually  restricted  to  that  peculiar  modification 
of  hexameters,  by  interposing  the  halting  pentameter,  which 
remained  through  the  rest  of  Greek  history  a  favourite  mode 
of  expression  in  personal  poetry.  We  have  all  manner  of  sub- 
jects treated  in  this  metre — morals,  military  and  political  exhor- , 
tations,  proverbial  reflections,  effusions  of  love  and  grief,  epi- 
grams of  praise  and  epitaphs  of  sorrow — so  much  so  that  it  is 
difficult  to  say  what  is  its  proper  province.  Perhaps  there 
are  three  points,  and  three  points  only,  which  may  be  called 
permanent  features  in  elegiac  poetry.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
persona!,  subjective  as  the  Germans  call  it,  and  this  feature 
comes  out  plainly  enough  even  where  the  poet  is  discussing 
public  topics,  as  in  Solon's  elegies,  or  narrating  epic  myths,  as 
Antimachus  in  his  Lyde.  Even  these  were  strictly  personal 
poems.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  almost  always  secular,  reli- 
gious poetry  being  either  hexameter  or  strictly  lyric  in  form. 
Thirdly,  it  is  Ionic,  and  except  in  the  case  of  epigrams  or 
epitaphs,  which  are  always  of  a  local  colour,  is  restricted  to  the 
dialect  where  it  first  arose. 

We  usually  speak  of  the  elegiac  poets  of  Greece  as  if  they 
were  a  distinct  class,  but  there  is  hardly  one  of  them  at  this  epoch 
who  did  not  use  various  metres,  as  appears  even  from  the  extant 
fragments.  Thus  Archilochus,  so  celebrated  for  his  iambic  satire, 
used  the  elegiac  metre  freely  and  with  great  elegance ;  Tyrtaeus 
employed  anapaests,  and  Solon  iambics.  There  is  in  fact 
hardly  an  early  poet  of  whom  we  know  much,  except  perhaps 
Mimnermus,  who  does  not  follow  the  example  of  Archilochus 
in  the  use  of  various  metres.  The  previous  use  of  elegiacs,  of 
which  the  invention  was  attributed  to  Archilochus,  may  perhaps 
be  established  by  the  alleged  quotations  from  CALLINUS,  a  poet 
of  Ephesus  about  the  fourteenth  Olympiad  (720  B.C.),  who  during 
the  conflicts  of  Magnesia  with  his  native  town,  and  during  the 

1  Mr.  Chappell  has  shown  (Hist,  of  Music,  i.  p.  276)  that  it  was  pro- 
bably constructed  on  the  clarinet  principle,  with  a  vibrating  tongue  of 
reed  inside  the  mouthpiece. 


CH.  x.  ARCHILOCHUS.  159 

dreadful  invasions  of  the  Kimmerians,  wrote  warlike  exhorta- 
tions in  elegiac  metre,  of  which  a  considerable  fragment  has  been 
preserved  by  Stobceus.  There  is,  however,  considerable  doubt 
whether  this  passage  is  not  the  work  of  Tyrtseus,  or  some  other 
early  poet,  and  the  shadowy  figure  of  Callinus  can  hardly  stand 
for  us  at  the  head  of  this  department  of  Greek  poetry,  though 
Strabo  distinctly  asserts  him  to  have  been  slightly  anterior  to 
Archilochus. 

§  1 1 6.  This  latter  poet  is  plainly  the  leading  figure  in  the  new 
movement,  and  a  strong  and  vigorous  personality,  who  spoke 
freely  and  fearlessly  of  all  his  own  failings  and  misfortunes.1  He 
was  born  of  a  good  family  at  Paros,  but  lived,  owing  to  poverty, 
a  life  of  roving  adventure,  partly,  it  appears,  as  a  mercenary 
soldier,2  partly  as  a  colonist  to  Thasos  ;  nor  do  his  wanderings 
appear  to  have  been  confined  to  eastern  Hellas,  for  he  speaks 
in  praise  of  the  rich  plains  about  the  Siris  in  Italy  (frag.  21). 
He  was  betrothed  to  Neobule,  the  youngest  daughter  of 
Lycambes,  his  townsman  ;  but  when  she  was  refused  him,  pro- 
bably on  account  of  his  poverty,  he  vented  his  rage  and  dis- 
appointment in  those  famous  satires,  which  first  showed  the 
full  power  of  the  iambic  metre,  and  were  the  wonder  and  the 
delight  of  all  antiquity.  He  ended  his  life  by  the  death  he  doubt- 
less desired,  on  the  field  of  battle.  In  coarseness,  terseness,  and 
bitterness  he  may  justly  be  called  the  Swift  of  Greek  Literature. 
But  even  the  scanty  fragments  of  Archilochus  show  a  range  ot 
feeling  and  a  wideness  of  sympathy  far  beyond  the  complete 
works  of  Swift.  He  declares  Mars  and  the  Muse  to  be  his 

1  '  Critias  (says  ./Elian,  Var.  Hist.  x.  13)  blames  Archilochus  for  re- 
viling himself  extremely,  for  had  he  not  (says  he)  circulated  this  charac- 
ter of  himself  through  the  Greek  world,  we  should  not  have  learned  that 
he  was  the  son  of  Enipo,  a  slave,  or  that,  having  left  Faros  on  account 
of  poverty  and  distress,  he  came  to  Thasos,  and  there  quarrelled  with  the 
inhabitants  ;  or  that  he  reviled  alike  friends  and  enemies  ;  nor  should  we 
hive  known  in  addition,  but  for  his  own  words,  that  he  was  an  adulterer, 
nor  that  he  was  licentious  and  insolent ;  and,  worst  of  all,  that  he  threw 
away  his  shield.' 

z  Mercenary  soldiers,  generally  thought  to  belong  to  a  later  age,  were 
common  at  that  time,  for  the  Greeks  were  always  ready  to  sell  their  ser- 
vices  to  the  rich  Asiatic  kings.  Cf.  Archil,  fragg.  24,  58. 


160  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

enduring  delights,  but  yet  what  can  be  more  passionate  than  his 
love  and  his  hate  in  all  other  human  relations  ?  He  has  noble 
passages  of  resignation  too,1  which  sound  like  the  voice  of  his 
later  years,  when  his  hardest  taskmaster  had  lost  his  sway. 
But  even  these  are  as  nothing  compared  to  the  real  gush  of 
feeling  when  he  describes  his  youthful  passions,2  his  love  for 
Neobule,  passing  the  Homeric  love  of  women.  Here  he  has 
anticipated  Sappho  and  Alcaeus,  as  in  his  warlike  elegies  he 
rivalled  Tyrta^us,  in  his  gnomic  and  reflective  wisdom  Solon  and 
Theognis,  in  his  jibes  Cratinus  and  Aristophanes,  in  his  fables 
./Esop. 

Of  his  Hymns  to  Heracles  and  Dionysus  we  are  not  able 
to  form  any  opinion.  Moreover  these  belong  to  the  choral  lyric 
poetry  of  the  Greeks,  which  we  separate  and  regard  under  a 
different  head.  But  it  is  clear  that  his  Hymn  to  Heracles  and 
lolaus,  also  called  an  Epinikion  of  Heracles,  after  his  labours, 
was  so  popular  that  it  was  regularly  sung  at  Olympia  by  a 
friendly  chorus  in  honour  of  the  victors  on  the  day  or  evening 
of  the  victory.  This  the  scholiasts  on  Pindar's  ninth  Olympian 
ode  tell  \\s,  and  the  custom  must  have  lasted  till  the  later 
lyric  poets  Simonides  and  Pindar  were  paid  to  write  special 
odes  for  these  occasions.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  this  hymn, 
of  which  the  scholiasts  just  mentioned  have  preserved  two  or 
three  lines,  the  leader  sung  the  refrain  (in  the  absence  of  an 
instrument),  while  the  chorus  sang  the  body  of  the  hymn. 

1  Frag.  66  :  ®V/JL(,  OV/JL  afjLTJxdvoiffi  K^Secriv  KvKct>/j.fve, 


arepvov,  tvSoKotffiv  f^Gpuv  ir\r)a'loi' 
aff(pa\(W  teal  jU^re  VIKUV  afjupaSyv  ayd\\fo, 
/K^re  viKTiOfls  lv  otit<p  Karavfatav  oSupeo' 
o.\\h  -xapTOiffiv  re  X°^Pe  Ka^  Kaxoiffiv  a<rxd\a 
(i^j  \iijv  ylyvaxTKe  5*  cilos  pvffpbs  a.vBp<airovs  «x 
Cf.  also  fragg.  56,  74. 

2  Frag.  84  :  Ai5<rr»jj'oj  eynetfiai  ir69ii> 

fyvxos,  xa\ein7<n  Qtiav  bftvvriaiv  e/cr/rt 
•n-fva.pfj.evos  St'  offreuv. 

And  frag.  103  :  To?os  70^  <£J\<$TI?TOJ  epeas  inrb  KapSltjv  t\v<rOfls 
iroA\V  /car"  ax\vv  ofjifidrcav  txevev 
/cAe^os  fK  errrjOewj'  oTraAas  <f>pevas. 


CH.  x.  7777;;  ELDER  SIMONIDES.  161 

Archilochus'  poems,  which  were  considered  by  competent  critics 
inferior  to  none  in  Greek  Literature,  except  in  their  subjects, 
were  preserved  and  known  down  to  the  Byzantine  age,  when 
their  outspoken  coarseness  caused  them  to  be  left  uncopied, 
and  even  deliberately  destroyed  by  the  monks. 

§  117.  The  next  poet  of  this  period  is  SIMONIDES, 'or,  as  some 
call  him,  Semonides,  son  of  Krines,  of  Samos,  who  led  a  colony 
to  the  island  of  Amorgos,  after  which  the  poet  is  called,  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  the  later  Simonides  of  Keos.  Here  he  dwelt 
in  the  town  of  Minoa.  The  chronologists  place  him  about  OL  29 
or  30  (660  B.C.),  and  make  him  contemporary  with,  if  not  later 
than  Archilochus.  Though  chiefly  celebrated  as  one  of  the 
earliest  iambic  poets,  he  wrote  the  Archaeology  of  Samos,  in  two 
books  of  elegiacs,  of  which  no  trace  now  remains.  About  forty 
fragments  of  his  iambic  verse  are  to  be  found  in  Bergk's  collec- 
tiun,  but  only  two  of  them  are  of  any  importance.  One  (25 
lines)  reflects  on  the  restlessness  and  trouble  of  life,  and  recom- 
mends equanimity  in  a  spirit  of  sad  wisdom.  The  othei 
(120  lines)  is  the  famous  satire  on  women,  comparing  them  to 
sundry  animals,  owing  to  their  having  been  created  of  these 
respective  natures.  Though  sceptical  critics  have  endeavoured 
to  pull  this  fragment  in  pieces,  and  subdivide  it  into  the  work 
of  various  hands,  we  cannot  but  see  in  it  the  stamp  of  a  pecu- 
liar mind,  and  a  sufficient  unity  of  purpose.  The  end  only  is 
feeble,  and  may  possibly  be  by  another  hand,  if  feebleness  be 
accepted  as  proof  of  spuriousness.  The  tone  of  the  poem  is 
severe  and  bitter,  but  with  seriousness  and  strong  moral  con- 
victions ;  the  picture  of  the  good  woman  at  the  close  is  drawn 

• 

1  Bergk  (Fragg.  Lyr.  pp.  515,  596,  sq.)  has  shown  considerable  grounds 
for  the  existence  of  an  early  Euenus  of  Paros,  who  wrote  erotic  and  sympotic 
elegies,  of  which  fragments  remain  in  the  collection  called  by  Theognis' 
name,  and  addressed  to  this  Simonides  as  a  contemporary.  There  was  a 
later  Euenus  of  Paros,  with  whom  he  may  have  been  confused,  and  so 
forgotten.  This  is  possible,  but  still  so  early  an  elegiast  should  have  at- 
tracted sufficient  notice  to  have  escaped  oblivion.  I  therefore  hesitate  to 
rehabilitate  him,  but  think  Bergk's  arguments  well  worth  indicating  to  the 
reader. 


162  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.        CH.  X. 

with  warmth  and  feeling,  and  shows  that  the  poet  did  not  un- 
dervalue the  sex.1 

I  have  elsewhere  2  commented  on  the  special  features  of  the 
poem.  The  general  idea  recurs  in  the  fragments  of  Phokylides. 
One  of  the  latter  fragments  (16)  is  notable  as  implying  the 
Ira/prt  of  later  days  to  have  been  fullblown  in  the  seaports  of 
Ionia,  even  in  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  nor  do  I  know  of  any 
other  early  mention  so  explicit.3 

There  is  another  early  Iambic  poet,  Aristoxenus  of  Selinus, 
cited  by  Hephasstion  on  no  less  authority  than  Epicharmus'  ; 
but  he  quotes  from  him  only  one  anapaestic  line  : 

ris  aAa£bpetap  rAcfffTOP  vapi^ft  tuiv  avOpioirow  ;  TO!  udvries, 

and  we  wonder  at  such  scepticism  in  Ol.  29,  the  date  attributed 
to  the  poet  by  Eusebius.  But  we  can  say  nothing  more  of  him 
than  to  record  the  echo  of  his  name.4 

§  1  1  8.  We  pass  to  a  more  famous  and  better  preserved  poet, 
TYRTVEUS,  who  does  not  hold  a  place  among  the  '  lambo- 
graphi,'  as  his  remains  are  either  elegiac,  or  anapaestic  —  the 
metre  suited  for  military  marches. 

When  the  famous  Leonidas  was  asked  what  he  thought  of 
Tyrtseus,  he  answered  that  he  was  dyafloc  viuv  $v%a.e  aiKa\\eiv 
—  good  for  stimulating  the  soul  of  youth  —  and  the  extant  frag- 

1  T^V  8"  e'/c  (J.f\iffffr]s-  fi\v  ris  evrvx^  AajSip 

Ktivri  ybp  oiy  /u&j/zos  ov  irpotri^dvef 
6d\\fi  8'  vit  O.VTTJS  Kairae^trai  ftioy 
ty(\t]  Se  ffvv  <j)t\fvi'Ti  yrjpdffKei  ir6ffft, 
reicovffa  /coAbf  KOvvo(Jid.K\vrov  ytvos' 
/captirpeirrjs  /j.tv  eV  yvvai^l  yiyvercu 


OKOV  \tyovffiv 
roias  yvvaiKas  avSpd 
Zfvs  TOS  apiffTas  Kal 
8  Social  Greece,  3rd  ed.  p.  1  10. 
8  Archilochus'  frag.  19  is  not  so  characteristic. 

4  He  is  classed  by  O.  Miiller  (ii.  55)  as  an  actual  forerunner  of  Epi- 
charmus among  the  originators  of  comedy,  which,  if  his  date  be  truly  as- 
certained, would  be  a  grave  anachronism.  The  tone  and  spirit  of  all 
the  early  iambic  poets  was  of  course  akin  to  comedy,  yet  we  can  hardly 
confuse  them  with  a  school  so  distant  and  so  unlike. 


CH.  x.  TYRT&US.  163 

ments  confirm  this  judgment.  We  have  several  long  exhorta- 
tions to  valour  (about  120  lines),  with  pictures  of  the 
advantages  of  this  virtue,  and  the  disgrace  and  loss  attending 
on  cowardice.  There  are  also  slight  remains  of  his  t/jfiari'ipia, 
or  anapaestic  marches,  which  were  sung  by  or  for  the  Spartans 
when  going  to  battle,  with  a  flute  accompaniment.  These  war- 
like fragments  differ  little  from  the  fragments  of  Callinus,  so 
little  that  many  critics  attribute  the  chief  fragment  of  the  latter 
to  Tyrtgeus.  He  is  also  said  by  Pollux  to  have  composed  songs 
for  three  choirs  —  one  of  old  men,  one  of  middle-aged,  and 
one  of  youths,  and  this  is  curiously  illustrated  by  a  fragment 
of  such  a  composition  preserved  in  Plutarch,1  where  each  line 
is  sung  by  a  chorus  of  different  age. 

There  are  also  some  remains  of  a  poem  cited  as  tuvop'ctj 
which  was  distinctly  political  in  character,  and  intended  to 
excite  in  the  public  mind  of  the  Spartans  an  attachment  to  their 
constitution,  and  especially  to  Theopompus,  the  Spartan  hero  of 
the  second  Messenian  war.  This  leads  us  to  the  circumstances 
of  Tyrtaeus'  life.  He  tells  us  himself  that  he  was  contemporary 
with  the  second  Messenian  war,  which  was  carried  on  by  the 
grandsons  of  the  combatants  in  the  first.  We  are  told  that  the 
hardships  of  this  war  to  the  Spartans  were  very  great,  thnt  a 
large  part  of  their  territory  adjoining  Messene  was  left  unculti- 

1  LyctirgiiS)  21  :  'Afj.fj.es  Tr6it  faes  &\Kifj.oi  veaviai. 

"Afj./j.es  Se  7'  tints'  01  8e  \ys,  avydcrSeo. 
"Afj.fj.es  8e  7'  fffff6fj.e(r6a  Tro\\<£  Kappoves. 


Bernhardy  (il.  p.  604)  thinks  that  the  tripartite  v6fj.os  mentioned  by 
Plutarch  (On  Music,  p.  1134  A),  which  Sakadas  composed,  with  the  first 
verse  Doric,  the  second  Phrygian,  the  third  Lydian  in  scale,  may  have  been 
similarly  intended  to  convey  the  temper  of  various  ages  of  human  life,  but 
the  actual  combination  of  Dorian  and  ^iolian  modes  by  Pindar  seems 
rather  to  weaken  the  conjecture.  The  fragments  of  TyrtEeus  are  mere 
extracts  quoted  by  Lycurgus,  or  Stobaeus,  or  other  authors,  and  have, 
therefore,  no  separate  MS.  authority.  So  also  there  are  no  separate 
editions,  so  far  as  I  know,  except  that  of  W.  Cleaver  (anon.  1761),  with 
an  English  metrical  translation  and  notes,  and  the  new  Italian  version, 
also  with  a  text  and  notes  by  Felix  Cavalotti  (Milan,  1878).  The  most 
convenient  text  is  that  of  Bergk  in  his  Lyrici.  The  reader  will  find  in  his  cri- 
tical notes  references  to  a  number  of  special  essays  upon  Tyrtctus  by  Osann. 


1 64  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

vated ;  and  Messenian  elegies  long  preserved  the  tradition  of 
the  hero  Aristomenes  chasing  his  enemies  across  hill  and  dale. 
Under  these  trying  circumstances  chronic  discontent,  or  what 
t'he  Greeks  called  orotne,  broke  out,  and  the  Spartans,  by  the 
direction  of  the  Delphic  oracle,  came  to  seek  from  Athens 
an  adviser.  Later  panegyrists  of  Athens  added  that  the 
Athenians  sent  in  derision  the  lame  schoolmaster  of  Aphidnse, 
whose  songs  so  inspirited  the  Spartans  as  to  give  them  finally 
the  victory.  Other  allusions,  however,  speak  of  him  as  a  Lace- 
daemonian, others  as  an  Ionian.  How  much  of  these  legends  is 
true  it  is  very  hard  to  say.  That  the  Spartans — a  race  very  sus- 
ceptible of  excitement  through  poetry  and  music,  but  not  pro- 
ductive in  these  arts — should  have  been  advised  to  borrow  a 
famous  poet  of  warlike  elegies  from  some  foreign  city  is  not  at 
all  incredible,  nor  is  it  more  so  that  the  style  already  popular 
in  the  home  of  Callinus  and  Archilochus  should  have  been 
domesticated  at  Athens.  The  consistent  tradition  as  to 
Tyrtseus'  origin  cannot  be  rejected  by  us,  though  he  completely 
identifies  himself  in  his  poems  with  his  adopted  country,  and 
writes  as  a  Laconian.1 

The  story  that  he  was  summoned  to  Sparta  on  the  authority 
of  the  Delphic  oracle  is  told  of  a  number  of  other  remarkable 
poets  about  the  same  time,  and  shows,  if  true,  that  the  priests 
of  the  shrine  had  in  their  minds  the  fixed  policy  of  improving 
the  culture  and  education  of  Sparta  in  the  seventh  century  B.C. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  they  (and  the  Spartan  kings)  foresaw  the 
dangers  arising  from  the  one-sided  Lycurgean  training,  which 
was  now  in  full  force  there,  and  sought  to  counteract  them  by 
stimulating  a  love  of  poetry  and  music.  Thus  a  whole  series 
of  poets  is  reported  to  have  been  invited  to  Sparta  by  the 
behest  of  the  Delphic  oracle,  and  to  have  ordered  and  esta- 

1  It  should  be  observed  that  he  adheres  to  the  traditional  Ionic  dialect 
in  his  elegiacs,  but  writes  his  marching  songs  in  the  Spartan  : — • 
"Ayer",  3>  ^irdpras  tvdvSpov 
Kovpoi  irarfpwv  iroXiarav, 
Xoio  fikv  trw  TTpof3d\eff0e, 
S6pv  8'  evT6\/ji 
IJL^I  <pei$6/J.evoi  ras 
ou  ykp  vdTpwv  T§ 


en.  x  MELIC  POETRY.  165 

blished  not  only  the  national  songs  of  the  Spartans,  but  public 
contests  in  music,  poetry,  and  dancing. 

§  1 1 9.  This  brings  us  for  the  first  time  into  contact  with 
the  true  lyric  poets  of  Greece,  who,  however,  have  been  so 
constantly  confounded  with  iambists  and  elegists  (themselves 
also  lyric  poets)  that  it  is  necessary  to  call  them  by  a  technical 
name,  and  style  them,  as  is  always  done  in  Germany,  Mclic 
poets.  The  distinctive  feature  of  these  poets,  who  were  exceed- 
ingly numerous,  but  are  exceedingly  ill-preserved,  and  very 
various  in  character,  was  the  necessary  combination  of  music, 
and  very  frequently  of  rythmical  movement,  or  orchestic,  with 
their  text.  When  this  dancing  came  into  use,  as  in  the  choral 
poetry  of  the  early  Dorian  bards,  and  of  the  Attic  dramatists, 
the  metre  of  the  words  became  so  complex,  and  divided 
into  subordinated  rythmical  periods,  that  Cicero  tells  us  such 
poems  appeared  to  him  like  prose,  since  the  necessary  music 
and  figured  dancing  were  indispensable  to  explain  the  metrical 
plan  of  the  poet.  I  have  no  doubt  many  modern  readers  of 
Pindar  will  recognise  the  pertinence  of  this  remark.  It  is 
therefore  certain  that  the  rise  of  melic  poetry  was  intimately 
connected  with  the  rise  or  development  of  music,  and  accord- 
ingly most  historians  of  Greek  literature  devote  a  chapter  in 
this  place  to  that  difficult  subject.  It  is,  however,  so  completely 
unintelligible  to  all  but  theorists  in  music,  and  there  is  even  to 
them  so  much  uncertainty  about  the  facts,  that  I  feel  justified 
in  passing  it  by  with  little  more  than  a  mere  reference  to  the 
many  special  treatises  on  the  subject.1 

§  120.  It  may,  however,  be  well  to  enumerate  briefly  the 
various  technical  terms  for  the  many  different  kinds  of  melic 
poetry.  The  simple  song  of  the  ^Eolic  school  was  sung  by 
one  person,  and  was  never  complicated  in  structure,  as  it  was 
merely  intended  to  reveal  personal  and  private  emotion :  the 
choral  melic  poetry  of  the  Greeks  was,  on  the  contrary,  grand, 

1  Cf.  Westphal's  Griechische  Musik  ;  Fortlage's  article  in  Ersch  und 
Gruber's  Griechenland ;  Mr.  Wm.  Chappell's  Hist,  of  Music,  vol.  i.  ; 
and  the  chapter  on  the  intelligible  results  of  much  abstruse  investigation 
in  my  Rambles  and  Studies  in  Greece. 


:66  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  X. 

elaborate,  and  public  in  its  tone.  It  was  devoted  to  state  interests 
and  public  affairs  :  nor  did  the  poet  venture  to  obtrude  himself 
except  by  passing  allusions.  In  very  old  times,  it  seems  that  the 
name  (ro/uoc)  addressed  to  the  gods  was  sung  before  the  altar, 
with  the  lyre,  by  one  singer  ;  but  this  fashion  early  made  way 
for  choral  performance,  when  it  was  called  hyrnn  (fyuj'oc).  Quite 
distinct  was  the  irpoffotiiov,  a  processional  song,  accompanied 
by  flutes,  as  the  chorus  marched  to  the  temple.  The  pecan  and 
dithyramb  are  hymns  addressed  to  Apollo  and  Dionysus  respec- 
tively. When  the  melic  poem  was  accompanied  with  lively 
dancing  it  was  called  hyporcheme  (u7™px?7//a)-  All  these  poems 
were  performed  by  men  and  boys,  but  there  were  special  com- 
positions for  a  chorus  of  maidens,  called  parthenia  (irapdlvta). 
These  titles  all  indicate  religious  poetry,  and  no  doubt  this  was 
the  earliest  field  of  melic  verse  ;  but  although  secular  matters 
had  many  other  forms  (such  as  the  elegy  and  the  ^Eolic  song) 
suited  to  them,  even  the  forms  of  religious  song  were  adapted 
to  them  on  great  public  occasions,  and  so  we  have  in  Pindar's 
day  lytw/zta,  songs  of  praise  ;  linviKm,  songs  of  victory;  and 
Opijvoi,  laments  for  the  dead — all  secular  applications  of  melic 
poetry.  These  technical  details  seem  necessary  to  explain  the 
constantly  recurring  terms,  which  the  historian  cannot  avoid. 

§  121.  As  I  have  already  mentioned,  the  poets  of  this  early 
period,  if  we  except  the  epic  poets,  were  almost  all  composers 
in  various  metres,  and,  what  is  more  important  from  the  point 
of  view  of  this  work,  they  did  not  clearly  separate  their  private 
feelings  and  public  functions.  The  iambic  metre,  which  in 
Archilochus  was  essentially  personal  and  subjective,  became, 
in  the  hands  of  the  earlier  Simonides  and  others,  the  vehicle 
for  general  sketches  and  for  proverbial  philosophy.  The  earlier 
elegy,  which  is  essentially  public  and  patriotic  in  character, 
down  even  to  Solon's  day,  was,  nevertheless,  by  Mimnermus 
brought  back  to  its  original  scope — that  of  amorous  complaint 
and  tender  grief,  nor  did  subsequent  ages  and  languages 
accept  the  tone  of  manly  endurance  and  of  political  teaching 
as  the  natural  voice  of  the  elegy.  When  Tyrtseus  and  Alcman 
were  friends  or  rival  bards  together  at  Sparta,  the  melic  hymns 
of  the  Lydian  weie  not  recognised  as  more  essentially  public 


CH.  x.  TERPANDER.  167 

than  the  warlike  elegies  of  the  Athenian.  Thus  even  Theognis 
and  Solon  cloak  their  public  advices  under  the  form  of  per- 
sonal exhortations  to  friends,  or  even  to  themselves,  and  Pindar 
carries  on  his  private  controversies  under  the  cover  of  public 
hymns  of  victory  and  praise  of  the  gods.  But  according  as 
the  various  styles  were  developed,  certain  precedents  began  to 
make  themselves  felt.  No  severance,  however,  took  place  till 
after  the  rise  of  Doric  choral  poetry ;  when  this  division  of 
melic  poetry  appropriated  all  the  public  affairs  of  men.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  iambic,  and  more  especially  the  elegiac,  metres, 
which  had  been  of  universal  application  hitherto,  began,  with 
the  ^Eolic  songs,  to  affect  a  personal  and  private  complexion. 
Hence,  from  this  period  onwards  a  division  according  to 
metres,  though  even  now  far  from  satisfactory,  to  some  extent 
accords  with  that  1  have  adopted  above  (p.  156).  I  purpose 
treating  first  the  personal  poetry  in  the  later  iambic  and  elegiac 
poets,  as  well  as  in  the  .^Eolic  melos,  and  then  the  public  lyrists 
of  the  Doric  type,  including  the  sepulchral  epitaphs,  which 
were  generally  elegiac  in  forra,  but  public  in  character. 

§  122.  The  student  should  carefully  distinguish  between 
k-idapuSwr]  and(^i\'i)  udaplffir,  singing  with  a  string  accompani- 
ment and  mere  harp  playing,  and  similarly  aiJAwSa-i/  and  ai/Aj?ra->/. 
Thus  Olympus  was  a  mere  auA^rtK-oe,  to  be  expunged  from  the 
list  of  lyric  poets,  and  Clonas  of  Tegea  seems  to  be  the  first 
avXyciKve,  or  composer  of  melic  poetry  with  a  flute  accom- 
paniment ;  and  this  innovation  was  supported  by  the  similar 
advance  of  Terpander. 

For  this  remarkable  man,  who  stands  at  the  head  of  the 
melic  poets,  is  called  the  first  Kt6api,>?6s,  or  composer  of  melic 
poems  accompanied  throughout  by  the  lyre,  in  contrast,  I 
suppose,  to  those  epic  recitations  which  began  with  an  am/3o\?; 
or  prelude  on  the  instrument.  If  this  be  true,  it  puts  him  in 
competition  with  his  great  contemporary  Archilochus,  who 
is  said  to  have  first  composed  independent  accompaniments 
(I/TTO  ri]v  w'cijr),  as  previously  the  instrument  had  followed  the 
voice  note  for  note  (trpuff-^op^a  Kpoveiv). 

We  know  nothing  of  Terpander's  youth,  save  that  he  was 
born  in  Lesbos,  the  real  home  of  melic  poetry,  and  came,  or 


163  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      en.  X. 

was  called,  to  Sparta,  where  he  established  the  musical  contests 
at  the  Karnean  festival  about  670  B.C.  (Ol.  26).  He  was  said 
to  have  been  victor  at  the  Pythian  contests  for  four  consecutive 
eight-year  feasts,  which  brings  down  his  activity  at  least  to  the 
year  640  B.C.  Thus  we  may  imagine  him  the  older  contem- 
porary of  Tyrtseus.  Not  twenty  lines  of  his  hymns  remain 
—  solemn  fragments  in  hexameters  or  heavy  spondaic  metres, 
which  show  that  hymns  to  the  gods  (nomes)  were  his  chief  pro- 
ductions.1 It  is  evident  that  epic  poetry  was  still  predomi- 
nant when  he  wrote,  and  affected  his  style.  One  interesting 
personal  fragment  is  quoted  by  Strabo  to  prove  that  he  in- 
creased the  strings  of  the  lyre  from  four  to  seven.2  Strabo 
seems  sure  about  the  sense,  though  not  about  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  lines.  But  in  spite  of  his  authority,  supported  by 
that  of  Mr.  Chappell,3  and  the  curious  statement  of  Plutarch,4 
that  he  deliberately  gave  up  the  use  of  many  strings,  and  won 
his  prizes  by  playing  on  three,  I  think  Bergk  has  hit  the  truth 
where  he  interprets  the  passage  not  of  the  strings  of  the  lyre, 
which  according  to  the  Hymn  to  Hermes  had  been  originally 
seven,  but  to  the  divisions  of  his  odes,  which  having  been  four, 
were,  according  to  Pollux,  increased  by  him  to  seven.5 

§  123.  The  names  of  Clonas  of  Tegea,  of  Sakadas  of  Argos, 
of  Polymnestus  of  Colophon,  of  Echembrotus  of  Arcadia,  are 
mentioned  as  successors  to  Terpander  in  the  art  of  combining 
music  and  poetry,  but  have  no  place  now  in  the  history  of 
Greek  literature,  as  all  their  works  have  long  perished.  The 
same  is  the  case  with  the  more  celebrated  Thaletas  of  Crete, 

1  Here  is  one  : 

Zeu  irdvruv 


Zev,  ffol  ffVfvSu 
rainav  vfivov  ap^dv. 
On  the  metre  cf.  Bergk,  FLG.  p.  813. 

2oi  8'  fifjiets  Terpdyripvi'  airoffrtpZ 


3  Hist,  of  Music,  i.  p.  30.  *  De  Mus.  18. 

5  Viz.   apxd,   /j.frapxd,    Kararpoird,  /j.eraKaraTpoird,    o/i<£aAoy,  tr^payls, 
(Tri\oyos.     The  second,  fourth,  and  last  are  evidently  the  added  members. 


CH.  x.  ALCMAN.  169 

summoned  by  the  oracle  (as  Tyrtaeus  was)  to  heal  pestilence 
and  sedition,  and  attach  the  citizens  more  firmly  to  the 
Lycurgean  constitution.  He  is  reported  to  have  organised 
afresh  the  Gymnopcedia  in  Ol.  28  (664  B.C.),  and  to  have 
composed,  not  only  nomes,  like  Terpander,  but  faans,  which 
were  sung  by  a  choir  with  dancing  or  rythmical  movements. 
Several  to  us  empty  names  are  also  cited  as  his  followers  and 
disciples. 

§  124.  The  first  essentially  lyric  poet  that  lives  for  us  is 
ALCMAN,  who  stands  somewhat  isolated  at  the  head  of  the 
melic  poets,  and  still  belongs  to  that  remarkable  epoch  of 
literary  history  when  Sparta,  during  the  seventh  century,  was 
gathering  from  all  parts  of  Greece  poets  and  musicians  to 
educate  her  youth.  Pausanias  saw  his  tomb  at  Sparta,  among 
those  of  celebrated  and  noble  Spartans,  and  speaks  of  his 
odes  as  not  deficient  in  sweetness,  though  composed  in  the 
unmusical  Spartan  dialect.  l  This  is  true,  the  fragments  are  of 
great  merit  ;  but  if  the  dialect  does  not  impair  their  beauty,  it 
certainly  makes  them  to  us,  as  it  did  to  the  old  grammarians, 
very  obscure.  We  learn  from  him  that  he  boasted  his  origin 
to  be  from  no  obscure  or  remote  land  —  enumerating  many 
countries  which  perplexed  even  the  old  commentators  —  but  from 
the  lofty  Sardis.2  It  is  to  be  presumed  that  he  had,  at  least,  an 
Ionian  mother  (if  he  was  not  brought  as  a  slave  to  Greece  in  early 
youth)  ;  for  no  pure  Lydian  could  have  written  as  he  did,  not 
even  in  the  Ionic  dialect,  but  in  that  of  his  adopted  country. 
But  the  whole  history  of  the  man,  and  the  main  features  of  his 
fragments,  show  us  how  completely  the  Sparta  of  the  seventh 


v  es  rjSoi'V  avriar  € 

yXaffaa,  ijKKrra  irapexo/J-fW)  rb  evQwvov.         , 
2  Frag.  25:  OVK  els  av^ip  &ypotKos  ouSe 

fficaibs  ou5e  Trap'  a-aofyolai 
ovSe  ®effffa\bs  ytvos 
ou8'  'Epv<rix<uos  ovSe  iroifji- 
a\\a  SapSi&jf  cbr'  ctfcpav. 

And  cf.  frag.  nS,  quoted  from  Aristides,  ii.  508  :  'ErfpuQiroivvv 
6/j.fvos  Trap'  ocrois  fiiSoKi/j.t'i,  TOffavra.  teal  roiavra.  tQvri  KaraKeyei  &ff-r>  trt  vv 
TOVS  ad\iovs  ypafj./j.a,TiffTa.s  fijTelic,  oil  •yrjs  ravr'  flvai. 
VOL.   I.  —  8 


170  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  X. 

century  differed  from  the  Sparta  of  the  fifth,  and  how  utterly 
the  Spartan  gentleman  who  warred  against  Messene  would 
have  despised  the  ignorant  professional  warrior  who  afterwards 
contended  against  Athens.  The  very  adoption  of  a  Lydian  at 
Sparta  (Suidas  says  a  Lydian  slave),  and  his  proud  enumera- 
tion of  geographical  names,  imply  a  spirit  the  very  reverse  of 
the  later  exclusiveness  (£ev?j\a<nu).  So  also  the  love  of  eating 
and  drinking  which  the  poet  confesses  of  himself,  his  account 
of  the  various  wines  produced  in  the  districts  of  Laconia,  his 
open  allusions  to  his  passion  for  Megalostrata,  and  the  loose 
character  of  his  erotic  poems  generally,1  are  quite  foreign  to 
the  ordinary  notions  of  Lycurgean  discipline.  I  suppose  that 
the  loyal  power,  which  endeavoured  to  assert  itself  in  eaily 
times,  and  was  only  reduced  to  subjection  by  the  murder  of 
Polydorus,  the  submission  of  Theopompus,  and  the  gradual 
strengthening  of  the  power  of  the  ephors,  attempted  to  carry  out 
a  literary  policy  like  that  of  the  Greek  despots.  In  the  seventh 
century,  before  the  struggle  was  finally  decided  against  them, 
the  kings,  aided  by  the  Delphic  oracle,  sought  to  emancipate 
the  subject  races  from  political,  the  dominant  from  educational, 
slavery  ;  and  so  it  came  that  poets  like  Alcman,  who  sing  of 
wine  and  love,  who  delight  in  feasting  and  eschew  war,  could  be 
tolerated  and  even  popular  at  Sparta.  But  the  first  of  the  melic 
appears  also  the  last  of  the  Spartan  poets. 

His  six  books  contained  all  kinds  of  melos,  hymns,  paeans, 
prosodia,  parthenia,  and  erotic  songs.  His  metres  are  easy  and 
various,  and  not  like  the  complicated  systems  of  later  lyrists. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  proverbial  wisdom,  and  the  form  of  his 
personal  allusions,  sometimes  remind  one  of  Pindar.  But 
the  general  character  of  the  poet  is  that  of  an  easy,  simple, 
pleasure-loving  man.  He  boasts  to  have  imitated  the  song  of 
birds  (fr.  17,  67)— in  other  words,  to  have  been  a  self-taught 
and  original  poet.  Nevertheless,  he  shows,  as  might  be  ex- 

1  Athenseus  cites  (through  Chamreleon)  Archytas  to  the  effect  that 
Alcman  yfyovevai  reav  fpcoriKcav  /j.f\<Hi>  rjye/j.6va,  Kal  fitfiovvai  irpcarov  /ue'Aos 
a-KoXavTov  5vra  K.T.\.,  and  then  quotes  frag.  36.  Of  course  Alcman  had  be- 
fore him  the  example  of  his  earlier  contemporary  Archilochus.  The  fragg. 
35-9  are  unfortunately  inadequate  specimens  of  this  side  of  his  genius. 


CH.  x.      PAPYRUS  FRAGMENT  OF  ALCMAN.  171 

pected,  a  knowledge  and  appreciation  of  Homer.  Several 
fragments  express  a  peculiar  love  and  study  of  nature,  somewhat 
exceptional  for  a  Greek  lyrist.  Of  these,  the  most  remarkable 
is  his  description  of  night,1  which  is  more  like  the  picture  we 
should  expect  from  Apollonius  Rhodius  or  Virgil  than  from  an 
early  Greek  poet.  The  other  is  evidently  written  in  advancing 
age,  and  with  a  presentiment  of  approaching  death.2 

But  by  far  the  longest  and  most  interesting  relic  of  Alcman 
was  found  in  1855,  by  M.  Mariette,  in  a  tomb  near  the  second 
Pyramid — a  papyrus  fragment  of  three  pages,  containing  a 
portion  of  his  celebrated  hymn  to  the  Dioscuri.  Two  of  the 
pages  are  wretchedly  mutilated,  and  the  sense  of  the  whole 
composition  is  very  obscure  and  difficult.  This  extraordinary 
discovery  is  not  so  precious  in  actual  results  as  in  the  hope  it 
gives  us  of  rescuing  in  the  same  way  other  portions  of  the  old 
Greek  poets  from  their  oblivion.  It  also  gives  us  a  very  early 
specimen  of  Greek  writing,  and  one  of  great  value  for  the  his- 

1  Frag.  60:    fuSovffiv  8'  opftav  Kopufyui  re  Kal  cpdpayyes, 

irpcttovfs  re  Kal  xapdSpai, 

<pvA\a  ff  fpire-rd  ff  offffa  rpfcpei  /u.eAcui'a  yuta, 

6rjpfs  bptffKqoi  re  KCU  ytvos  yueAnnrac 

Kal  Kvu5a\'  tv  fifvBfffi  Troptyvptas  a\6s' 

evSovffiv  8'  oiiav&v 

<pv\a  ravvjrrfpvywv. 

'A  beautiful  peculiarity,' says  Mure  (Hist.  Gk.  Lit.  iii.  206),  'of  this 
description  is  the  vivid  manner  in  which  it  shadows  forth  the  scenery 
of  the  vale  of  Lacedsemon,  with  which  the  inspirations  of  the  poet  were  so 
intimately  associated  ;  from  the  snow-capped  peaks  of  Taj;getus  down  to 
the  dark  blue  sea  which  washes  the  base  of  the  mountain.  The  author 
would  find  it  difficult  to  convey  to  the  imagination  of  the  reader  the 
effect  produced  upon  his  own  by  the  recurrence  of  the  passage  to  his  mind, 
during  a  walk  among  the  ruins  of  Sparta,  on  a  calm  spring  night,  about  an 
hour  after  a  brilliant  sunset.' 

2  Frag.  26 :  oti  yu'  «?TJ,  irapQfviKaL  [i.f\iydpvfs  i/j.fp6<peavoi, 

yvta  (ptpetv  Svvarai'  /3aA.€  6)7  jSaAe  Krjpv\os  efjji/, 
os  T'  firl  Kv/naros  &v6os  a^u'  a\Kv6i/fir<n  TrorrjTat 
vrj\fyfs  -ffTop  fX(avt  a-b-nt&ptyvpos  f?apos  opvis. 

The  term  /crjpvAos  was  used  for  the  male  halcyon.  On  @d\f,  the  mar- 
ginal note  says  the  full  word  is  d/3«Ae,  <7?],ucH'T<;cb»'  evxys,  and  equal  to 
&<pt\tt>,  titie,  eWf. 


i;2  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

tory  of  palaeography.     I  append  the  more  intelligible  part  in  a 
note  below.1 

1  Its  restoration  has  been  attempted  (since  its  first  publication  by  Egger 
in  his  Mhnoires  cThistoire  aruienne)  by  Ten  Brink  and  Bergk,  with  some 
success  ;  lastly,  by  F.  Blass  in  Hermes,  vol.  xiii.  p.  27,  from  whose  text  I 
quote,  as  it  differs  considerably  from  earlier  restorations.  After  celebrating 
the  victory  of  the  Dioscuri  over  the  Hippocoontido?,  the  poet  proceeds  to 
sing  the  praises  of  Agido  and  Agesichora. 

COL.  II.  2rp.  $'. 

2        *E(TTi  TIS  fflUV  TlfflS'  36 

88'  u\@tos,  off-ri 


&K\avffTOS,  eykv  8'  aeiSw 

'AytScas  T&  <f>ws'  6pu>  40 

f>'  4>T>  OA.IOJ/,  ovirep  afjiiv 


tyaivev.  fye  5'  O#T'  eiraivtv 
IO       ovre  /j.ufj.fO'Oai  viv  a  K\evt>a 

ovSauus  irj'  SoKffi  yap  ftp-tv  avra  45 

eKirpfirrjs  rus  yirep  at  ns 

ev  y3oTO?s  ffrdfffifv  tirirov 

iraybv  a.fd\o(p6pov  Kavax<iiro$a, 
15       TWV  viroirerpiSiuv  oveipcav. 
2rp.  t'. 

'H  ovx  tiprjs  ;  6  pev  Kf\ljs  $O 

'EceriKdy  a  8e  xaira 

•ras  €fj.as  avftytus 

'Ayriffix6pa,s  firavOe't 
2O       xpvffbs  tfT1  aK-fifiaros, 

r6  T'  apyvptov  irp6a<eirov.  55 

Siat^aSav  TI  rot  \eyca  ; 

'A.yricrix^pO'  Hfv  aura" 

a.5e  SfVTfpa  ireS'  'A-yiSajy  rb  eTSos 
25       'iitiros  el^vy  KoAo|  des  Spa/uefroi. 

ral  rieA.€ta5es  yap  afuv  60 

'OpBia  (papas  (pfpoiaais 

VVK-TO.  81'  apfipoffiav  ayea"fipiov 

&ffrpot>  avftpo/j.eva.t  /j.dxovTai. 

2rp.  r'. 
30       Oi»Te  yap  TI  Troptyvpas 

r6<r<ros  Kopos  Sxrr'  auwat,  65 

otjre  iroiKiAos  Spdiccav 

Tcayxpvffws,  oi)5e  /j.irpa 


CH.  x.  MIMNERMUS.  173 

§  1  25.  Returning  to  the  elegy,  or  personal  poetry  of  the  epoch, 
we  come  to  a.  very  distinctive  and  remarkable  man,  MIMNERMUS 
(called  Liguastades,  for  his  sweetness),  the  first  composer  of 
purely  private  and  sentimental,  as  opposed  to  political,  elegies. 
There  are,  indeed,  in  his  fragments  historical  allusions,  and  he 
describes  (fr.  14)  with  much  fire,  and  in  a  spirit  not  unworthy 
of  Tyrtasus,  the  valour  of  a  hero  '  who  scattered  the  dense 
phalanxes  of  the  Lydian  horsemen  through  the  plain  of  Her- 
mus.'  This  he  had  heard  from  the  elders  who  remembered 
the  wars  with  Gyges,  for  the  date  of  Mimnermus  is  given  as 
Ol.  37,  or  the  close  of  the  seventh  century,  and  he  was  an 
early  contemporary  of  Solon.  But  his  other  fragments  are  those 
of  the  greatest  interest,  and  are  chiefly  from  his  book  or  books, 
called  Nanno,  after  a  flute  player  whom  he  loved  without 
success.  He  is  himself  called  an  avXydoc,  or  singer  with  a 
flute  accompaniment,  and  he  probably  revived  the  old  plaintive 

COL.  III.      TO.V  olSa  fyapiav  &ya\fna, 

ovSe  ral  NawEs  K6fjiat>  7° 

dA\'  ot>8'  'Epara  ffifiS-fis, 
otiSe  2vXa/cis  re  Kal  KAeTjcria-^pc, 
jj       «ii8'  fs  Alvr)a'L/j.l3p6ras  fi/Ooiffa  tyafftis 
*  !A<JTa<f>i's  re  fiot  ytvoiro, 
Kal  iroriy\tiroi  $i\v\\a,  75 

Aa/uanra  T'  tpard  re  'Iav6e/j.ls,' 
/te  TTjpet 


IO       Ov  yap  a  Ka\\iff(f>upos 

'Ayr)(rixdpa  Trap'  oure?  ; 

'A7j5ot  /ueV<p'  tip  /J.fvfi,  80 

Bwffr'fipia,  K&H'  tifawti. 

a\\a  Toi/[5'  a/jJ]iav,  trial, 
15       8e'|acrO''  atrovrirl  &va 

Kal  rf\os'  ypavs  r6  ris 

f?iroijj.i  K?  '  airav  fj.ev  avra  85 

irapffevos  pdrav  airb  Opdvca  Ae'Aa/ca 

y\av£'  eyHw  8e  T^  juep  'AdJrt  fj,d\iffra 
2O       av5dvr)v  epca'  irovuw  yap 

a/ttfj   »T<yp  Hyevro' 

'£  'Ayr)tnx6pas  8e  t>edvi$es  go 

fl  ft  citvas  (paras  e'lre'/Saj'.' 


174  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  X,, 

elegy  of  the  Phrygians,  in  close  sympathy  with  the  sorrowful 
laments  of  his  sweet  and  tender  muse.  To  the  later  Alexan- 
drians, and  the  Romans,  whose  reflective  age  peculiarly  appre- 
ciated the  sad  world-weariness  of  this  bard  of  Kolophon,  the 
Nanno  elegies  of  Mimnermus  were  a  favourite  model,  and 
we  may  perhaps  assign  to  him  the  position  and  title  of  the 
Petrarch  of  Greek  literature. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  contemporaries  and  immediate 
successors  of  Mimnermus  were  of  a  different  opinion.  The 
poets  who  desired  to  sing  of  love  and  passion  did  not  adopt 
his  elegiac  metre  as  their  fittest  vehicle.  It  still  remained  the 
metre  of  political  and  philosophical  expression,  of  wise  advice, 
of  proverb  and  of  epigram.  To  early  Greek  love,  to  the  pas- 
sion of  Alcaeus,  Sappho,  and  Anacreon,  no  form  could  be  more 
unutterably  slow  and  cold  than  the  deliberate  hexameter. 
When  bookworms  at  Alexandria  and  Roman  dilettanti  began 
to  talk  about  love,  it  suited  them  well  enough,  and  it  was  the 
subdued  and  resigned  attitude  of  Mimnermus,  his  modernism, 
if  I  may  so  say,  which  made  him  to  them,  and  to  many  of  the 
moderns,  so  sweet  and  perfect  a  singer  of  love. 

I  do  not  think  the  famous  fragment  (12)  on  the  perpetual 
labours  of  Helios  so  striking  or  characteristic  as  those  which 
sing  of  the  delights  of  love,  and  the  miseries  of  old  age  1  — 

rjfi.e'ts  8'  old.  re  <pv\\a  <f>det  iro\vav0€os  Siprj 

eapos,  or'  alty'  avyfjs  ad^erai  i]f\lov, 
Toiis  I/ceAoJ  ir(ixvlov  ^  xp&vov  &vQe<nv  %/3r] 

TfpTr&fjitQoL,  Trpbs  Bfiav  fl56rfs  o&re  KCUC<>C 
ofa*  aya66v  •  Krjpts  8e  irapfffriiKaffi  /j.(\atva 

•^  fikv  fxovtra  Tt\os  yfipaos  a.pya\eov, 
fj  8'  eripri  6a.va.roio'  fnivvvda.  8e  yiyvfrat 

tcdpiros,  Scrov  8'  eiri  yyv  KiSvarai  rj^Aior 
av-rap  eirj/p  8$)  TOVTO  reAoy  irapafiffyerai  &pi]st 

auri/ca  re9vd/j.tvai  P(\.TIOV  t)  &IOTOS  • 
iro\Aa  yap  tv  QvfJUf  KaKa  ytyvfraf  &\\orf  o1xos 
TpvxovTai,  ireviris  8'  tpy'  oSvvripa  ire\er 

&\\os  8'  a5  iraiScav  eiriSfverai,  Sivrf  ud\iffra 


fpcav  Kara,  yys  fpxfrai  fs 
fi\Aos  vovarov  ex6'  9vLto<f>06pov  ou5*  TJS 
uy,  Si  Ztvs  ft)]  KaKa  iro\>a  StSoi. 


CH.  x.  SOLON.  175 


,  as  lie  calls  it,  applying  an  epithet  which  he  used  with 
curious  consistency  of  all  manner  of  disagreeable  necessities. 
In  his  hatred  of  old  age,  he  struck  a  note  which  found  response 
in  many  Greek  hearts  at  all  times,  and  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
repeat  without  improving  the  burden  of  his  elegies. 

Almost  all  the  fragments  (some  90  lines)  express  the  same 
gloom  and  the  same  despair.  We  owe  the  preservation  of 
most  of  them  to  Stoboeus  ;  Strabo  has  cited  a  few  of  geogra- 
phical importance,  Athenseus  that  on  the  sun's  course.  His 
ninth  fragment  tells  how  '  we  left  the  lofty  Nelei'on  of  Pylos, 
and  came  in  ships  to  the  lovely  Asia,  and  into  fair  Kolo- 
phon  we  settled  wiih  might  of  arms,  being  leaders  of  wild 
daring,  and  starting  from  thence  by  the  counsel  of  the  gods  we 
took  the  ^Eolic  Smyrna.'  This  is  a  very  early  and  clear  piece 
of  evidence  for  what  is  called  the  Ionic  migration,  which  has 
been  doubted,  or  relegated  to  the  region  of  myths  by  some 
sceptical  historians. 

§  126.  Mimnermus  leads  us  over  naturally  to  SOLON, 
who  addressed  him  in  a  still  extant  fragment,  in  reply  to  his 
lines  :  — 

at  yap  &rep  vovffuv  re  KO.I  apya\e(ay  ft.f\fS<avu>v 
f^ijKovraeTr]  fj.o'ipa  KI^OJ  Qa.va.rov. 

Solon's  answer  was  as  follows  :  — 

ctAA'  ft  fJLOi  KO.V  vvv  fri  ireifffai,  e|eAe  TOVTO, 

/UTjSe  fj.tya.ip  Sri  fffii  \cfov  eire^ipao'a.uTji', 
Kal  fj.fraTroi-fiffoi',  AiyvavrdSr),  aiSe  8'  &eiSe' 
.  'OySdiKovraerrj  /j.o'tpa.  KI^O:  Qa.va.rov. 

It  appears  then  that  these  elegies  were  well  known,  and 
the  poet  yet  alive,  when  Solon  was  a  literary  man.  The 
events  of  Solon's  great  life  form  an  important  chapter  in 
Greek  history,  and  can  be  found  there  by  the  student.  We  are 
here  only  concerned  with  his  literary  side.  He  is  remarkable 
in  having  written  poetry  not  as  a  profession,  nor  as  his  main 
occupation,  but  as  a  relaxation  from  graver  cares.  He  was 
first  a  merchant,  then  a  general,  then  a  lawgiver,  and,  at  last, 
a  philosophic  traveller  ;  and  all  these  conditions  of  life,  except 
the  first,  are  reflected  in  his  extant  fragments.  As  usual 


1 76  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

with  the  personal  poets  of  that  epoch,  he  employed  various 
metres,  of  which  the  elegiac  was  the  chief,  but  the  iambic 
also  prominent,  and  not  for  satire  and  invective,  but  for  poli- 
tical and  philosophic  reflections.  Some  lines,  apparently  from 
early  compositions,  are  cited  to  show  his  high  appreciation  of 
sensual  pleasures,  and  there  are  features  in  his  laws  which 
prove  that  he  made  large  allowance  for  this  side  of  human  na- 
ture in  his  philosophy.  Amid  the  various  feelings  which  appear 
in  his  personal  confessions  we  miss  the  poetical  despondency 
of  Mimnermus,  and  that  peculiar  beauty  and  sweetness  of  ex- 
pression, which  made  him  an  unapproachable  master  of  the 
elegy  in  our  modern  sense.  Solon  is  a  practical  man,  at  times 
a  philosopher  who  speculates  on  Providence  and  the  life  of 
man;  again,  a  noble  martyr  for  his  country,  who  feels  beset  by 
foes  and  jealous  rivals,  and  complains  bitterly  that  he  stands 
alone  and  unfriended  in  the  state  which  he  has  saved.  But  he 
is  always  manly,  and,  perhaps,  somewhat  hard  and  plain  in  his 
language,  choosing  poetry  as  the  only  known  vehicle  of  expres- 
sion in  his  day,  but  saying  in  verse  what  in  after  days  would  have 
been  said  in  prose.  Hence  it  is  that  the  later  orators  found 
him  so  suitable  for  quotation.  His  political  recollections,  and 
his  advices  to  his  friends,  were  in  Athens  handbooks  of  poli- 
tical education. 

There  remain  but  eight  lines  of  his  famous  elegy  called 
Sa/amis,  whereby  he  incited  his  people  to  persevere  in  wrest- 
ing this  island,  the  place  of  his  birth,  from  Megara.  Of  his 
Meditations  ('YVc^/ccu  ttc  'AOr)valovQ  and  tie  iavrot')  several 
long  passages  are  quoted,  one  by  Demosthenes,1  to  which  the 
student  can  easily  refer ;  several  by  Plutarch  and  Diogenes 
Laertius  in  their  lives  of  Solon,  another  by  Stobseus.  The 
last,  a  passage  of  seventy  lines,  is  of  great  interest  as  con- 
taining a  summary  of  Solon's  philosophy  concerning  human 
life,  but  can  hardly  be  fairly  conveyed  by  quoting  short  extracts. 
Many  other  snatches  of  proverbial  wisdom,  or  gnomes,  are 
cited  from  these  virodijKat,  and  are  among  the  sententious  frag- 
ments •\vhich  have  made  historians  speak  of  the  Gnomic  poets  of 

1  In  his  riapoirpeVjSeto,  p.  254. 


CH.'X.  SOLON.  177 

Greece  as  a  distinct  class.1  This  was  never  the  case,  though 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  personal  poets  from  this  time 
onward  adopted  a  philosophical  tone  which  made  them  pecu- 
liarly fit  for  educational  purposes.  Many  of  his  poems  bore  on 
their  titles  personal  dedications,  Trpbs  Kpiriar,  Trpoe  ftiXuKvirpov, 
TTjOoc  $WKO»',  thus  preserving  the  personal  character  of  the  elegy, 
while  treating  public  topics.  The  last  cited  was  in  tetrameters, 
and  told  of  the  temptations  and  solicitations  to  which  the  great 
lawgiver  had  been  exposed.2  He  also  composed  melic  poems 
for  musical  recitation  at  banquets.  All  these  varied  scraps, 
full  of  precious  historical  information,  do  not  now  amount 
to  more  than  250  lines.  I  will  quote  the  elegy  on  the  nine 
ages  of  man  (though  doubted  by  Porson),  because  it  seems 
preserved  entire  in  a  somewhat  inaccessible  treatise  of  Philc 
and  because  it  develops  an  idea  often  since  repeated  in  philc 
sophical  poetry.  This  poem  is,  indeed,  constantly  referred  to 
by  ancient  authorities.3 

1  e.g.  iro\\ol  yap  Tr\ovrev<n  KO.KOI,  ayaBol  8e  irivovrat 

ciAA'  Tjfj.f?s  avTo'is  oil  Sta.fj.ei^/6/j.eda 
TTJS  operas  rbv  tr\ovrov,  tntl  rb  /uej/  e/j,ireSov  alfl, 
a  5'  dvOcbircav  &AAore  &\\os  eei. 


And  navTTj  8'  a,6avdr<av  cKpavfys  v6os  avdp 

a  text  admirably  developed  in  his  frag.  13,  of  meditations  (intoQr\Ka.i  eh 


2  He  was  thought  a  fool  by  his  friends  not  to  seize  and  hold  tha 
tyranny  of  Athens  when  he  had  the  power,  for  in  their  opinion  it  waa 
worth  being  flayed  alive  to  have  once  enjoyed  such  a  position.     Euripides 
gives  an  admirable  expression  of  this  Greek  passion  for  holding  a  tyranny  in 
the  speech  of  Eteocles  in  his  Phcenissa,  vv.  398,  sq.  —  the  solitary  passage 
which   may  have  come  from  Euripides  through  George    Gascoigne  into 
Shakespeare,  as  will  be  shown  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 

3  irais  fJ.ev  &vr)/3os  f&v  ert  vrjTrios  fpitos  o^6vrtav 

<pvffas  tK&d\\ti  irpurov  tv  eirr'  erecrtv 
TOVS  8'  frtpovs  ore  8?;  re\ea"ri  Oebs  eirr  eviavrovs, 


TJ  rpirdrp  Se  •yeveiov  af^o/j.evcoi>  %TI  yvtcav 


fi  Se  rerdpry  iras  TIS  tv  e/85o,ua8t  >j.fy'  HpiffTOS 
itrxvv,  ^vr  &v$pes  ffii 
T]  8'  upiov  &vSpa  ya.jj.o 

8* 


i;8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.X. 

It  is  often  maintained  that  Solon  is  the  one  great  politician 
who  holds  a  place  in  Greek  literature,  but  this  is  only  true  for 
us,  and  would  never  have  been  asserted  had  the  works  of  his 
contemporaries  reached  us.  It  seems,  on  the  contrary,  to  have 
been  the  fashion  at  this  period  for  every  important  politica. 
man  to  teach  his  fellow-citizens  in  elegies,  and  to  write  con- 
vivial songs,  as  we  may  see  from  the  notices  of  Diogenes  about 
Pittacus,  and  Periander,  and  Bias.1  Hence  the  reputation  of 
the  so-called  Wise  Men,  who,  according  to  all  the  different 
lists  of  them,  agree  in  combining  poetical  teaching  with  practi- 
cal politics.  ThuJ  the  wild  confessions  of  Archilochus,  which 
were  followed  up  in  Lesbos  by  no  less  passionate  effusions, 
led  the  way  to  confessions  of  far  different  men,  and  to  the 
development  of  the  didactic  side  of  elegiac  and  iambic  poetry. 
The  elegy  assumes  from  this  time  onward  this  special  charac- 
ter, and,  if  we  except  its  public  side,  as  epigram,  and  a  few 
imitations  of  the  older  social  tone,  appears  confined  within 
limits  unknown  in  the  seventh  century. 

§  127.  Contemporary  with  the  serious  and  philosophical 
poetry  of  Solon,  we  have  that  remarkable  burst  of  genius  in  the 
island  of  Lesbos,  which,  though  it  lasted  but  a  generation,  has 
affected  the  lyrics  of  the  world  more  than  all  the  rest  of  Greek 
poetry.  This  school,  though  strictly  melic,  and  always  ac- 
companied by  music,  differs  fundamentally  from  the  Doric 

Hal  TraiSoiiv  frirtiv  elffoiritrw  yevtfy  • 
rfj  8"  eKrp  irepl  iravra.  Karaprverai  v6os  av8p6s, 

ovS"  epSfiv  eff  o/j-ws  epy'  atrd\a/jiva,  6e\ei- 
eitrb.  8e  vovv  teal  y\<£<r<ra.v  eV  ef}8o/j.d(nv  pey'  frpurros 

OKTU  T1'  a/j.(pOT€pcoi>  Tfffffapa  Kal  SeV  err)- 
rfj  8'  eVarj?  en  fj.ev  Svvarai,  fna.\a.K(arepa  8"  avrov 

irpbs  /J.fyd\r)v  dper^v  y\£ff(rd  re  Kal  ffocpli]- 
rrj  Se/carjj  8'  ore  8^  TeAeV??  Oebs  firr'  fviavrovs, 

OVK  tu>  &a>pos  fa>f  fnoipav  ex01  Qavdrov. 

1  By  comparing  Herodotus,  i.  170,  concerning  Bias'  political  advice  to 
the  lonians,  with  the  verbally  similar  statement  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  i.  5, 
tvolljfft  fie  irepl  'Icavias,  riva.  /J.d\tffra  &v  rp6wov  fv8ai(j.ovoiri,  els  ITTTJ  SKT^IAIO, 
I  am  persuaded  that  in  Theognis,  vv.  757-68,  we  have  an  actual  fragment  of 
Bias  preserved,  describing  the  blessings  of  the  proposed  Ionian  settlement 
in  Sardinia. 


CH.  x.  ALCAEUS  AND  SAPPHO.  179 

melos,  in  being  personal,  secular,  and  composed  in  a  different 
and  local  dialect,  theyEolic.  I  therefore  prefer  classing  it  with 
the  personal  poetry  of  the  Greeks,  and  separating  it  from  the 
public  choral  poetry,  with  which  other  historians  have  com- 
bined it.  At  the  head  of  this  famous  ^Eolic  poetry  stand 
Alcaeus  and  Sappho,  contemporaries,  and  both  of  Lesbos, 
nourishing  from  the  4oth  Olympiad  onward. 

We  know  of  ALC^US  that  he  was  an  aristocrat  of  Mitylene, 
that  he  fought  against  the  Athenians  for  the  possession  of 
Sigeum,  but  fled,  and  threw  away  his  shield,  which  was  hung  up 
by  his  adversaries  as  a  trophy.  He  was  ever  busy  in  the  con- 
flicts of  the  aristocrats  against  the  rising  power  of  the  people, 
and  against  the  tyrant  who  professed  to  represent  them.  About 
Ol.  45  he  assisted,  along  with  his  brother  Antimenidas,  and  with 
Pittacus,  in  the  overthrow  of  the  tyrant  Melanchros  ;  but  when, 
after  much  trouble  and  the  death  of  another  tyrant,  Myrsilus, 
the  great  body  of  the  citizens  chose  Pittacus  as  their  dictator 
(a  power  which  he  held  589-79  B.C.,  and  then  resigned), 
Alcaaus  and  his  party  were  exiled,  and  lived  a  roving  and  adven- 
turous life.  Alcaeus  went  as  far  as  Egypt,  Antimenidas  as  a 
mercenary  to  fight  under  Nebuchadnezzar,  King  of  Babylon, 
and  distinguished  himself  by  slaying  an  opposing  Goliath.  At 
some  time  during  Pittacus'  rule  Alcaeus'  party  attempted  a  for- 
cible return,  when  he  was  taken  prisoner,  but  at  once  liberated 
by  the  man  whom  he  had  reviled  with  the  greatest  bitterness 
and  fury  in  his  poetry.  These  few  facts  show  us  in  Alcaeus  the 
perfect  picture  of  an  unprincipled,  violent,  lawless  Greek 
aristocrat,  who  sacrificed  all  and  everything  to  the  demands  of 
pleasure  and  power.  These  are  the  men,  and  this  the  type  of 
aristocrat,  which  gave  the  tyrants  all  their  opportunities. 

§  128.  Of  SAPPHO  (in  her  own  dialect  ^fair^a)  we  know  that 
she  was  the  daughter  of  Skamandronymus  (or  Skamon)  and  of 
Kle'is.  She  was  small  and  dark,  but,  notwithstanding  these 
defects,  often  called  beautiful.  The  official  position  of  her 
brother  Zarichus,  who  was  public  cupbearer,  and  the  adven- 
tures of  her  brother  Charaxus,  who  was  in  the  wine  trade  with 
Naucratis,  and  spent  his  substance  on  the  fair  Rhodopis,  would 
imply  that  she  too  was  of  rich  and  aristocratic  birth.  She 


i8o  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

is  said  to  have  had  a  daughter  Kleis,  and  to  have  stood  in 
friendly  relations  to  Alcasus.  She  gathered  about  her  a  society 
of  various  maidens,  who  were  inspired  by  her  example  to  cul- 
tivate music  and  poetry.  Of  these  the  most  celebrated  was 
Erinna,  whose  poem  called  'HAm-arj/  (the  Spindle)  was  quoted 
and  admired. 

There  is  no  hint  of  political  writing  in  the  remains  of 
Sappho.  She  seems  to  have  devoted  all  her  genius  to  the 
subject  of  love,  and  was  decidedly  the  greatest  erotic  poet  of 
antiquity.  The  exceeding  passion  in  her  extant  fragments,  and 
the  constant  travesties  of  her  in  the  middle  and  new  comedy, 
to  which  her  position  as  a  literary  woman  made  her  peculiarly 
exposed,  have  produced  a  general  impression  against  her 
moral  character.  She  sang  of  her  unrequited  love  for  Phaon, 
and  a  legend  came  to  be  believed  that  she  had  in  despair 
cast  herself  from  the  Leucadian  rock,  at  the  remote  end  of 
the  Greek  world.  She  is  further  accused  of  having  felt  an 
unnaturally  violent  passion  for  her  girl  friends,  and  her  poetry 
has  been  called  licentious  and  immoral.  There  has  been  a 
warm  controversy  between  Welcker,  on  the  one  hand,  who 
with  over-chivalry  has  vindicated  the  honour  and  purity 
of  Sappho,  and  Mure,  on  the  other,  who  has  turned  aside 
from  his  path *  to  undertake  the  unpleasant  task  of  proving 
that  her  passion  was  no  mere  enthusiasm,  and  that  she 
was  no  better  than  she  ought  to  be.  Without  entering  upon 
this  unsavoury  discussion,  I  venture  to  suggest  that  both  ad- 
vocates are  wrong  in  assuming  that  their  own  view  excludes 
that  of  the  other.  If  I  understand  the  aristocratic  society  of 
these  times  rightly,  what  we  call  purity  and  virtue,  and  what  we 
call  unchastity  and  vice,  were  as  yet  to  a  great  extent  fused  in 
that  larger  and  more  human  naturalism,  which  embraces  im- 
pulses of  both  kinds  in  their  turn,  and  which  refuses  to  consi- 
der momentary  passion  a  permanent  stain  upon  honour  or  even 
purity.  The  highest  virtue  of  the  Greek  aristocrats  did  not 
exclude  all  manner  of  physical  enjoyment.2 

1  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  iii.  pp.  315,  496,  sq. 

2  M.  E.  Burnouf  (Lit.  grecque,  i.  p.  194)  points  out  with  great  good  sense 
that  most  literary  historians  have  falsely  imagined  the  society  and  habits  of 


CH.  x.  ALC&US  AND  SAPPHO.  181 

§  129.  Having  thus  summarised  our  scanty  information 
concerning  the  lives  of  these  great  artists,  we  may  approach  at 
more  leisure  the  more  important  question  of  their  position  and 
services  in  the  development  of  Greek  literature.  The  first 
point  to  be  settled  is  their  filiation,  if  any,  or  their  utter  inde- 
pendence from  previous  art,  and  their  recurrence  to  the  pure 
source  of  popular  song.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  direct 
heredity  of  Alcaeus,  at  all  events,  from  Archilochus  has  been 
very  much  overlooked. 1  No  two  poets  in  Greek  literature  are 
so  like  in  temper.  Not  to  speak  of  distinct  copying,  such 
as  the  confession  of  throwing  away  his  shield  in  Alcaeus,  we 
can  see  in  the  abuse  of  Pittacus  a  political  counterpart  to 
the  attacks  on  Lycambes,  we  can  see  the  same  employment  of 
very  various  metres,  the  same  enjoyment  of  love  and  wine,  of 
rambling  about  the  world,  and  of  adventure.  Neither  poet 
uses  the  unvarnished  dialect  of  his  native  town,  but  from  expe- 
rience of  travel,  and  probably  from  purely  artistic  reasons, 
both  write  a  literary  form  of  their  national  speech.  So  far  as 
the  love  poems  of  Archilochus  are  extant,  they  seem  also  the 
distinct  forerunners  of  the  poetry  of  Sappho  ;  there  is  the  same 
flow  of  passion,  the  same  indescribable  power  of  painting  the 

the  ^Eolians  at  Lesbos  to  have  been  exceptionally  free  and  even  loose.  They 
probably  differed  in  no  social  or  moral  respect  from  their  Ionic  neighbours 
in  Samos,  Teos,  and  elsewhere.  Both  contrasted  with  the  notions  deve- 
loped in  course  of  time  at  both  Sparta  and  Athens.  '  A  1'epoque  de  Sapho 
et  d'Alcee,  les  cites  eoliennes  et  ioniennes  avaient  encore  ces  mceurs  aris- 
tocratiques  qui  les  font  ressembler,  a  beaucoup  d'egards,  a  la  republique  de 
Venise  du  temps  oil  le  noble  Marcello  composait  pour  la  haute  societe  du 
Grand-Canal  les  psaumes  qui  ont  rendu  son  nom  celebre  :  les  relations 
sociales  y  etaient  libres  et  faciles,  quelquefois  licencieuses,  mais  toujours 
empreintes  d'elegance  et  de  cette  noblesse  de  manieres  qui  appartienne  aux 
aristocraties.  Du  reste  le  climat  des  iles  et  des  rivages  eoliens  est  d'une 
douceur  qui  tourne  a  la  mollesse,  et  qui  engendre  aisement  la  volupte ; 
le  canal  de  Lesbos  est  eclaire  le  soir  d'une  suave  lumiere  et  parcouru  sans 
cesse  par  des  brises  tiedes,  mais  non  enervantes,  que  parfument  les  arbustes 
odoriferants  des  montagnes.  Les  richesses  et  le  luxe  de  1'Asie  abondaient 
sur  ces  rivages  et  donnaient  aux  nobles  Grecs  de  ces  contrees  ces  habitudes 
de  langueur  et  de  poesie  passionnee,  dont  nous  retrouvons  encore  quelque 
chose  dans  leurs  descendants  italiens  et  asiatiques.' 

1  Horace  (Epist.  i.  19,  v.  28)  points  out  clearly  the  metrical  filiation. 


182  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  x. 

agony  of  desire.  In  these  features  they  both  contrast  with  the 
gentler  and  more  resigned  complaints  of  Mimnermus,  who 
naturally  uses  the  calm  elegiac  metre,  while  the  others  felt  the 
necessity  of  shorter  and  more  hurried  rythms.  The  dialect  ot 
Sappho  is  more  strictly  the  local  language  of  Mitylene,  and 
not  so  purified  as  that  of  Alcseus,  but  both  were  full  of  hard 
expressions,  which  are  perpetually  commented  on  by  lexico- 
graphers. 

On  the  whole,  antiquity  seems  to  have  placed  Sappho  in 
the  first  rank,  and  despite  the  variety  of  subjects  and  of  interests 
in  Alcaeus,  preferred  the  pure  voice  of  gentle  and  womanly  feeling 
in  her  love  poems.  But  the  Alexandrians  thought  differently, 
and  while  several  of  them  edited  critical  texts  of  Alcseus,  they 
seem  to  have  paid  no  similar  attention  to  Sappho.  Never- 
theless, according  to  M.  Burnouf,  both  poets  survived  till  the 
eleventh  century  A.D.,  when  they  were  burned  at  Constanti- 
nople and  at  Rome,  in  the  year  1073,  during  the  popedom 
of  Gregory  VII.  Thus  these  inestimable  exponents  of  Greek 
feeling  have  only  reached  us  in  slight  and  scattered  fragments, 
most  of  them  by  mere  grammatical  or  lexicographical  notes. 

§  130.  Their  lyrics,  apart  from  the  difficult  dialect,  are  far 
more  easy  to  comprehend  than  the  more  elaborate  rythms  of 
Pindar,  Alcman,  or  Stesichorus.  For  instead  of  long  complicated 
systems,  which  required  all  the  help  of  music,  and  even  of  danc- 
ing, to  bring  out  the  symmetry,  and  carry  on  the  hearer  to  the 
antistrophe  and  the  epode,  the  odes  of  Alcseus  and  Sappho 
were  constructed  in  short  simple  stanzas,  which  were  easily 
comprehended,  and  recitable  even  without  their  musical  accom- 
paniment. They  were  in  fact  the  earliest  specimens  of  what  is 
called  in  modern  days  the  Song  or  Ballad,  in  which  the  repetition 
of  short  rythms  produces  a  certain  pleasant  monotony,  easy  to 
remember,  and  easy  to  understand.  It  is  this  quality,  in  con- 
trast with  the  elaborate  systems  of  Pindar's  metres,  which 
makes  Horace  exclaim  that  Pindar  is  inimitable,  and  which  led 
him  to  confine  himself  to  the  ^Eolic  poets  of  Lesbos,  and  their 
simpler  art.  We  know  perhaps  as  much  of  Alcaeus  and  Sappho 
through  Horace  as  through  their  own  fragments.  For  though 
the  genius  of  the  Roman  poet  was  totally  different,  though 


CH.X.        ANQTENT  AND  MODERN  LYRICS.  183 

the  political  and  erotic  passions  of  the  Greek  aristocrat  were 
not  only  strange  to  his  nature,  but  the  very  reverse  of  his 
teaching,  yet  he  adhered  so  closely  to  the  idiom  as  well  as  the 
measures  of  his  models,  that  much  of  the  old  Greek  grace  and 
some  of  the  fire  are  felt  through  the  colder  medium  of  his 
translations. 

But  while  Romans  and  moderns  have  proclaimed  this  side  of 
the  lyric  poetry  as  the  best  and  the  most  perfect,  the  verdict  of 
the  Greeks  was  quite  different.  No  one  doubted  the  intense 
genius  of  both  poets,  or  of  their  successor,  Anacreon ;  Sappho 
especially  is  praised  through  all  Greek  literature  as  a  tenth  Muse, 
as  equal  to  Homer,  as  unapproachable  in  grace  and  sweetness. 
Yet  the  course  and  development  of  lyric  poetry  drifted  away 
from  them ;  the  simple  song  did  not  speak  to  the  Greeks  like 
the  great  choral  systems  of  Stesichorus  and  Arion,  and  thus 
the  last  and  most  perfect  development  of  this  kind  of  poetry,  of 
the  melos  of  the  Greeks,  was  no  offshoot  of  the  school  of  Lesbos. 
For  the  character  of  this  Lesbian  poetry  was  such  as  to  dis- 
pense with  orchestic,  and  this  was  to  the  Greeks  so  important  an 
element  in  melic  poetry,  that  the  higher  kinds  were  not  to  be 
appreciated  without  it.  All  this  will  appear  clearly  when  we 
come  to  treat  of  choral  lyric  poetry. 

The  poems  of  Alcosus  were  divided  according  to  subjects — 
first  Hymns,  then  Stasiotica,  telling  of  adventures  in  politics  and 
war,  then  Skolia,  then  Erotica;  nor  were  the  latter  three  very 
clearly  distinguished.  Two  books  are  cited  from  the  editions 
of  Aristophanes  and  Aristarchus.  Sappho's  poems,  on  the 
contrary,  were,  divided  into  at  least  nine  books,  and  according  to 
metres,  but  all  called  indiscriminately  pe\r).  She  wrote  hymns,' 
like  Alcseus,  but  both  poets  composed  in  a  free  and  secular 
spirit,  nor  did  they  take  their  place  among  the  really  religious 
poets  of  the  Greeks.  Their  metres  are  very  various — some  of 
them  very  difficult  to  analyse  in  our  fragments,  and  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  what  we  know  as  the  Alcaic  and  Sapphic 
metres  were  the  most  prominent  in  their  works.  They  are  so 
fully  described  in  the  prefaces  to  Horace,  that  I  need  not 
detail  them  here.  Sappho  was  said  to  have  first  introduced  the 
key  known  as  Mixo-Lydian,  and  to  have  raised  the  epithala- 


184  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.X. 

mium  to  a  place  in  artistic  poetry,  though  the  form  seems  to 
have  been  fixed  by  Alcman  or  Stesichorus.  Her  two  longer 
extant  fragments  have  been  preserved  as  specimens  of  excel- 
ence  by  Dionysius  and  Longinus.1 

We  have  no  fragment  equally  long  from  the  works  of 
Alcseus,  though  there  are  many  beautiful  thoughts  still  surviv- 
ing, such  as  that  cited  by  Plutarch,  which  makes  Eros  the 
child  of  Iris  and  the  West  wind  —  of  the  sunlit  showers  and 
soft  breezes  of  spring.  His  fragment  40  is  directly  copied  from 
a  passage  in  Hesiod  —  if  both  do  not  repeat  an  older  popular 
song.  His  metaphor  of  a  storm-tossed  ship  for  the  agitated 
state  became  at  once  a  commonplace  in  Greek  -literature.2 
The  unusual  forms  of  the  ^olic  dialect  make  the  readings  of 
all  these  fragments  very  uncertain  and  contested. 

1  *cuVeTcu  fj.oi  KTJVOS  tffos  6(0ifftv 
ffj.fjLfv''  &vf\p,  uffTis  evavrlos  roi 
i£dvft,  Kal  ir\aaiov  55u  (pwvtv- 

tras  viraKOvft 

ical  ye\aiffas  Ifj.tp6ef.     T<5  fioi  fiat 
KapSiav  tv  ffr^dfcriv  fTrr6afftv, 
us  yap  eHiSov,  /3pox««s  fff  (fxavas 

ovStv  er'  elicei  • 
a\\a  KO./J.  /jiff  'yXSiffffa.  eaye'  \firrbr  $' 


owirdrfffffiv  S'  oiiSei/  opy/*1, 

jSeOiri  8'  &KOVO.L  • 
a  Se  fjC 

iraffav  aypft,  -)(\<>)pOTfpa.  8e  iroias 
<tp.p.i'  TeOva.Ki)v  8'  6\lyw 

t^aiVouat  &\\a. 
a\Aa 


*       'Affvverijfii  TU>V  avffuav  ffrdffiv  ' 

rb  fjikv  yap  evQtv  Kv/j.a  KvXivSera 
rb  8*  tv6ev  •  &jj.fj.fs  8"  av  rb  /j-f 
vai  <(>op-l]fj.f8a  avv  (J.f  \alva, 

Xfifjuavi  poxQevvrts  (J.eyd\tp  f*d\a.- 
TTfp  nfv  yap  &VT\OS  l(rr6ireSav 

Xdifyos  Se  TCO.V  ^dSrf\ov  ^817 
Kal  Aa/ciSes  fj.eya\ai  Kar'  a5ro' 

X<5Aa£(rt  8"  &yKvpcu. 


CH.  X.          sEOLIC  POEMS  OF  THEOCRITUS.  185 

§  131.  This  is  the  proper  place,  in  accordance  with  the  plan 
of  my  work,  to  notice  the  three  imitations  of  the  dialect,  metre, 
and  manner  of  the  old  ^Eolic  poets  by  the  Alexandrian 
Theocritus.  They  are  the  28th,  2Qth,  and  3oth  idylls  in  the 
collection  ascribed  to  him  (at  least  in  the  most  recent  editions, 
such  as  Ziegler's  and  Fritzsche's  second  editions),  for  the  last  of 
them  was  only  recovered  from  a  Milan  MS.  in  the  year  1864. 
The  28th  is  an  elegant  little  address  to  an  ivory  spindle  which 
the  poet  was  sending  as  a  present  to  the  wife  of  his  physician- 
friend,  Nikias  of  Kos,  and  was  probably  composed  on  the  model 
of  a  poem  of  Sappho.  The  other  two  are  properly  called  TraiciKo. 
AloXik-a.  and  are  poems  on  the  sort  of  love  most  prominent  in 
the  society  of  Alcasus.  One  of  them  has  been  even  suspected 
to  be  the  real  work  of  Alcaeus.  To  me  that  last  in  order, 
though  in  a  most  corrupt  and  hopeless  state,  as  anyone  may 
see  in  the  transcript  printed  by  Fritzsche  before  his  emended 
version,  seems  poetically  the  best,  and  is  full  of  grace  and 
elegance.  The  dialect  is  believed  to  be  an  artificial  Doric,  to 
some  extent  coloured  with  the  later  local  speech.  The  metres 
are  either  the  asclepiadics  common  in  Horace's  Odes,  which  are 
imitated  from  the  same  source,  or  what  are  called  JEoYic 
dactylics.  There  is  no  trace  of  strophes  in  any  of  the  three 
poems.  Though  Theocritus  was  probably  one  of  the  best 
imitators  in  any  age,  it  cannot  be  said  that  this  attempt  to 
reproduce  the  love  poetry  of  Alcasus  has  made  much  impression 
upon  the  world.  It  is,  at  all  events,  quite  eclipsed  by  his 
bucolic  side,  in  which  his  originals  were  far  less  known  and  less 
splendid,  and  his  imitation  fresher  and  full  of  genius. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE    PROGRESS   OF   PERSONAL   POETRY. 

§  132.  WE  now  come  to  the  epoch  of  Greek  poetry  which 
was  so  brilliant  and  many  sided,  that  it  is  not  possible  to  treat  it 
in  chronological  order,  nor  to  separate  clearly  the  various  threads, 
which  were  becoming  closely  connected  and  interlaced.  We 
find  Ol.  60  mentioned  as  the  date  of  the  flourishing  of  so  many 
poets,  that  we  begin  to  wonder  what  circumstances  favoured 
literature  at  this  juncture.  Of  the  many  which  suggest  them- 
selves, three  may  be  noted  as  of  great  breadth  and  importance. 
First,  the  caste  feeling  of  the  Greek  aristocracy  was  brought  out 
and  intensified  by  the  conflicts  with  tyrants  and  democracies;  and 
this  stimulated  the  bitter  hate,  and  the  complaints  of  travel,  of 
exile,  and  of  unfriendliness,  which  we  find  repeated  in  the  re- 
mains of  Theognis.  Secondly,  the  rise  of  brilliant  courts  under 
the  tyrants,  who  reached  perhaps  their  highest  point  about  this 
time — Samos,  Syracuse,  Athens,  Corinth  were  now  swayed 
by  them — had  again  created  a  lofty  patronage  for  poets,  and 
high  remuneration  for  their  art,  not  to  speak  of  the  rivalry  among 
the  cities  of  victors  at  the  games  to  obtain  their  praises.  Most 
of  the  later  lyric  poets  would  have  greatly  disgusted  Alcseus  or 
Solon.  They  had  sunk  back  to  the  social  position  of  depend- 
ants on  princes,  like  the  old  epic  rhapsodes,  when  they  did  not 
assert  their  liberty  in  turbulent  exile  by  vehement  and  bittei 
railing.  Still  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  being  a  well-paid 
and  well-honoured  court  poet  favoured  Anacreon,  and  Pindar, 
and  Simonides  of  Keos,  and  many  others  who  lived  in  the  great 
art-centres  of  Greece. 

There  remains  yet  a  third  widely  different  reason.  While 
education  and  consequently  literature  were  being  more  and 


CH.  XI.  THE  GOLDEN  AGE   OF  GREEK  POETRY.  187 

more  disseminated,  prose  had  not  yet  been  adopted  as  a 
vehicle  of  thought,  and  thus  the  whole  intellectual  outcome 
of  the  nation  took  the  form  of  verse.  Much  of  what  re- 
mains is  indeed  prosaic  in  idea.  Xenophanes  followed  the 
older  wise  men  in  attempting  to  clothe  philosophy — and  this 
time  real  philosophy — in  a  poetic  form.  The  wisdom  of  Pho- 
kylides  and  of  Theognis  is  not  half  so  poetical  as  Plato's  prose. 
But  the  Greeks  awoke  very  slowly,  as  is  well  known,  to  the 
necessity  of  laying  aside  metre  in  writing  for  the  public,  and 
even  when  they  did,  we  shall  find  their  prose  never  shaking  off 
a  painful  attention  to  rythm. 

Thus  the  whole  of  the  Hellenic  world,  now  better  informed, 
better  read,  better  educated,  had  no  other  expression  than  poetry, 
and  so  this  age,  the  end  of  the  sixth  century,  became  the  greatest 
and  most  brilliant  epoch  in  all  the  history  of  Greek  poetry. 
Now  for  the  first  time,  perhaps  for  the  only  time,  the  Greeks  of 
Sicily,  Italy,  Hellas,  Africa,  the  islands,  and  of  Asia  Minor  were 
all  contributing  independently  to  the  national  literature.  They 
did  not  all  crowd  to  Sparta,  as  formerly,  or  to  Athens,  as  after- 
wards. They  were  not  all  epic  poets,  as  of  old,  or  dramatic,  as 
all  the  great  ones  of  later  days.  They  kept  up  elegiac,  iambic, 
and  hexameter  verse  ;  they  cultivated  personal  and  choral  lyrics 
with  equal  success  ;  nor  was  it  till  the  close  of  this  epoch  that 
the  latter  form  of  lyrics  asserted  itself  as  having  gained  the 
suffrages  of  the  entire  Hellenic  world.  For  this  reason  I  have  left 
the  history  of  public  choral  poetry  to  the  last,  and  will  not  take 
it  up  till  I  have  sketched  the  varied  developments  of  personal 
poetry  in  connection  with  the  authors  already  discussed. 

§  133.  Unfortunately,  our  most  considerable  remains  from 
this  epoch  are  those  of  elegiac  poetry,  which  was  perhaps  the 
poorest  and  least  characteristic  species.  Its  day  was  gone,  and 
with  the  exception  of  its  survival  in  epigrams,  it  fell  asleep  till 
it  was  resuscitated  by  the  Alexandrians,  and  became  a  favourite 
form  of  Roman  poetry.  Thus  at  this  period,  elegiacs  and  the 
lame  iambics  of  Hipponax  seem  to  have  been  the  form  adopted 
by  less  poetic  minds,  which  would  in  a  later  century  have 
spoken  simple  prose.  We  have  a  few  pithy  fragments  of 
PHOKYLIDES  of  Miletus,  giving  his  experiences  in  short  proverbs 


188  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XI. 


with  the  formula  This  too  is  Phokylides1  (au  ro£e  OwcuX/^tw),  but 
we  know  nothing  of  his  life.  He  imitates  Simonides  in  satirising 
women  by  comparing  them  to  domestic  animals,  he  speaks  of 
Nineveh  familiarly  as  a  great  city,  he  wishes  to  be  of  the  middle 
class  (jueVoe  iv  TroAet),  and  even  ridicules  the  advantages  of  high 
birth,  so  that  he  can  in  no  wise  be  regarded  as  an  instance  of 
the  common  statement,  that  all  the  poets  of  the  lyric  age  were 
aristocrats.  There  are  similar  feelings  scattered  through  the 
collection  called  that  of  Theognis,  not  to  speak  of  Hipponax. 
But  of  Phokylides  nothing  more  can  be  learned.1 

§  1  34.  XENOPHANES  is  a  clearer  personality,  whose  life  is  not 
only  in  other  respects  very  interesting,2  but  whose  extant  frag- 
ments are  far  the  finest  left  us  from  this  epoch  of  the  elegy,  it 
not  altogether  the  finest  we  possess.  The  first  describes  the 
conditions  of  a  really  pleasant  feast,3  the  second  is  an  attack  on 

1  I  purposely  pass  by  in  silence  the  spurious  moral  poem  once  attributed 
to  him,   consisting  of  some  250  hexameters  (Bergk,  pp.   455-75)  neatlj 
put  together,  and  stating  the  Jewish  moral  code  pretty  completely.     Then 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  late  Alexandrian  Jew. 

2  He  seems  to  have  written  as  much  in  epic  hexameters  (on  which  cf. 
above,  p.  122)  as  in  elegiac  form. 

Nvv  yap  S^i  {diretiov  na.Qa.pbv  KaL  Xe~Pfs  a-iraairtav 

Kal  Kv\iKfs  •  v\fKTOvs  8'  a.fji<piTi6et  ffre<pdvovs, 
&\\os  8'  euaJSes  fivpov  tv  <j>id\y  iraparelvfi  • 

Kpijr^p  5'  fffrrjKfV  jueo-rbs  4v<ppocrvn)s  ' 
olvos  8'  fffrlv  fTOi/jios,  its  oJ/irore  <f>ij<rl  irpo5«<reii», 

/j.fl\ixos  tv  Kfpdfiois  &v8eos  6ffS6/j.fvos  ' 
tv  5e  fjifffots  ayt^iv  oS/ji^v  Xifiavwrbs  lijffiv, 

•fyvxpbv  8'  fcrriv  vSup  Ko.1  y\vKv  «ol  Ka.da.p6v  ' 
irdpHtivrai  8'  &proi  £av0ol  ytpap-f]  re  Tpdirefa 

Tvpov  Ka.1  /te  \ITOS  iriovos  axOofifin)' 
/3&>jubs  8'  &v6ffftv  a.v  rb  fjLfcrov  irdfrrj  ireiruKCKTTOj, 

fio\ir))  8'  a.fj.tp}s  «x6'  8<6/taTa  na.1  OaAirj. 
XP^  5^  irpSrrov  fJLtv  Oebv  v/j.vftv  e&Qpovas  Hvdpas 

evcp-fipois  ftvdois  Kal  Ka8apo7ffi  \6yots. 
tnreicravras  Se  /cat  ev£a.jj.fvovs  TO.  St'/caia 

trpriffffeiv  '  TO.VTO,  yap  Siv  fcfn 
oi>x  vfipets  irivfiv  8'  oir6ffov  Kfv 

olKaS'  avev  irpoir6\ov,  fj.^i  iravv 

aive'tv  rovrov,  Ss  f(rO\a  itiiiiv 

J  v6os  a.p.tf  aotrri1. 


CH.  XI.  THEOGNIS.  189 

the  increasing  mania  for  athletics  and  for  physical  training, 
which,  keeping  pace  with  the  growing  national  importance  of 
the  public  games,  began  to  infest  the  Greece,  very  much  as  it 
has  been  infesting  the  England  of  later  years.  We  know  that 
Solon  had  protested  against  this  evil  a  generation  earlier, 
and  had  diminished  the  public  rewards  given  to  victors  at  the 
games.  In  the  next  century  Euripides  (whose  scholiast  quotes 
this  fragment  of  Xenophanes)  writes  in  the  same  spirit.  In 
later  days  generals  like  Alexander  and  Philopcemen  set  their 
faces  steadily  against  athletic  training  as  unserviceable  for  mili- 
tary purposes.  We  hear  from  Xenophanes  that  he  began  to 
philosophize  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  and  had  been  spreading 
his  thoughts  through  Greece  for  sixty-seven  years,  so  that  it  is 
probable  that  his  activity  began  while  Solon  was  yet  alive,  at 
all  events  early  in  the  sixth  century.1 

§  135.  The  same  may  certainly  be  said  of  his  contemporary 
THEOGNIS,  under  whose  name  we  have  a  little  volume  of 
elegies  (nearly  1,400  lines)  of  which  the  greater  part,  called  the 
first  book,  contains  all  manner  of  political  and  social  advices, 
while  the  rest  is  devoted  to  amorous  complaints  of  the  coldness 
or  faithlessness  of  a  favourite  boy,  whom  the  poet  addressed 
throughout  his  works.  From  the  allusions  in  these  poems  it 
appears  that  Theognis,  who  belonged  to  Megara  in  Greece, 
though  he  is  also  called  a  citizen  of  the  Sicilian  Megara,  was 
one  of  the  old  aristocratic  party,  which  had  crushed  and  op- 
pressed the  lower  classes,  till  after  many  internal  feuds  and 
troubles  the  dynasty  of  Kypselus  in  its  turn  defeated  and 
exiled  the  oppressors,  and  gave  liberty  and  property  to  the  com- 
mon people.  After  the  fall  of  the  Kypselids  the  party  struggles 

otn  ndxas  Sifireiv  TiT-tivwv  ovtie  riydvT(i>i>, 

ovSe  TO,  KevTavpcav,  ir\d(Tfiara  TUV  irporfpcav, 

$}  ffrdffias  ff<j>t$avds  '  ro"is  ouSej'  xprjcrrbv  tveffriv 
QfSiv  tie  vpofj.Tj6ftriv  altv  exflv  a-y<*86v. 

1  Bergk  places  his  appearance  as  a  philosopher  so  far  back  as  Ol.  46,  7, 
so  that  he  would  come  quite  close  to  Thales  ;  and  this  would  account  fot 
his  not  departing  from  the  poetical  form  of  teaching,  as  Heracleitus  did, 
whose  work  may  be  fifty  years  later.  But  this  explanation  is  unnecessary, 
cf.  above,  p.  123. 


190  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE.     CH.  XL 

recommenced,  but  with  this  difference,  that  the  people  had 
got  possession  of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  property  of  the 
better  classes,  and  entered  upon  the  conflict  with  some  idea  of 
their  own  rights  and  claims.  This  was  of  course  most  galling 
to  the  aristocrats,  who  remembered  their  opponents  '  wandering 
about  in  sheepskins  and  goatskins,'  and  glad  to  accept  any 
benevolences  in  their  despair. 

The  genuine  elegies  of  Theognis  appear  to  have  been 
advices  to  a  young  aristocratic  favourite,  Kyrnus,  also  called 
by  the  patronymic  Polypaides,  on  the  importance  of  high 
breeding,  on  the  essential  vileness  of  the  lower  classes,  on  the 
decay  of  party  spirit  among  the  Megarian  nobles,  and  the 
rising  influence  of  wealth.  The  nobles  are  called  the  good,  as 
\ve  call  them  the  better  classes,  and  the  mere  citizens  (uarof) 
are  called  the  bad  systematically,  but  by  no  means  in  such  a 
way  as  to  warrant  the  absurd  inference  that  in  the  poet's  mind 
good  (ttyaOor,  tVQXog)  and  bad  (KUKOC)  had  a  purely  political 
meaning.  There  are  ample  evidences  in  the  elegies  of  these 
words  in  their  strictly  moral  sense,  which  indeed  was  established 
long  before  Theognis. 

There  are  other  allusions,  such  as  to  the  threatened  wars  of 
the  Medes,  which  might  lead  us  to  further  inferences  about 
the  poet's  life,  if  the  elegies  now  collected  under  his  name 
were  the  unalloyed  expressions  of  one  poet,  and  not  a  sort  of 
politico-moral  '  elegant  extracts '  put  together  for  educational 
purposes,  long  after  the  poet's  death,  and  without  any  attempt 
to  maintain  his  real  teaching.  There  is  no  Greek  poet  to 
whom  the  application  of  this  Wolfian  theory  has  been  more 
eminently  successful.  The  allusions  to  the  Lelantine  war  on 
the  one  hand,  and  to  the  Medes  on  the  other,  stretch  far 
beyond  the  life  of  any  one  man,  even  were  he  to  make  such  fla- 
grantly inconsistent  assertions  about  morals  and  politics  as  are 
found  in  the  collection.  Moreover,  lines  elsewhere  preserved 
as  Solon's  and  as  Tyrtseus'  reappear  as  Theognis' ;  and  with 
this  change,  that  in  more  than  one  case  the  opening  and  con- 
cluding lines  (containing  some  general  summary  or  reflection) 
are  set  down,  omitting  the  body  of  the  poem,  as  it  appears  in 
Stobaeus,  and  as  assigned  to  the  older  author.  This  shows  clearly 


CH.  XT.  THEOGNIS.  191 

the  intentions  of  the  compiler.  He  only  wanted  moral  saws, 
and  not  personal  poems.  Bergk,  who  has  worked  all  this  out, 
shows  furthermore  that  only  the  old  elegiasts  are  excerpted,  no 
notice  being  taken  of  such  poets  as  Ion  or  Critias.  The  date 
of  the  compilation  is  limited  by  a  passage  of  Isocrates,  who 
wishes  that  such  a  collection  were  made,  and  again  in  the 
other  direction  by  a  passage  in  Plato's  Laws,  who  says  that 
some  such  plan  was  being  adopted  by  practical  educators.  Our 
so-called  Theognis  therefore  probably  took  its  present  form 
about  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century.  I  have  already 
noticed  how  there  is  perhaps  a  fragment  of  Bias  of  Priene, 
among  others,  here  preserved  to  us.  Possibly  Callinus  and 
Mimnermus  are  also  represented.  Unfortunately  the  most 
valuable  parts,  both  historically  and  aesthetically,  have  been 
omitted  by  the  dry  schoolmaster  who  made  the  selection. 
The  poetical  value  of  the  collection  is  small,  and  the  tone 
approaches  the  modesty  and  tameness  of  prose,  as  old  critics 
observed.  The  convivial  fragments  are  perhaps  the  best.  It 
is  to  be  remarked  that  the  second  book,  which  contains  love- 
complaints  almost  exclusively,  breathes  a  manly  and  vigorous 
tone,  and  reminds  us  of  what  the  ancients  have  reported  of  the 
character  of  such  attachments  among  the  old  Cretans  and 
Eubceans.  Fragments  of  the  poems  seem  indeed  to  refer  to 
Euboea,  others  to  Sparta,  and  the  whole  is  composed  in  the 
educated  Ionic  dialect,  which  was  far  removed  from  the  ordi- 
nary speech  of  the  Megarians.  This  is  accordingly  the  most 
striking  instance  of  the  close  connection  between  a  peculiar 
dialect  and  a  peculiar  form  of  poetry,  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
ordinary  language  of  the  poet. 

§  136.  Bibliographical.  As  to  MSS.  they  are  very  numerous, 
at  Paris  and  the  Vatican  especially,  but  also  at  Venice,  Florence, 
and  elsewhere.  Bekker's  collation  has  shown  the  paramount 
value  of  one  (A)  known  as  Mutinensis  (which  alone  contains 
the  second  book),  now  in  Paris  {Codd.  Grczc.  Suppl.  388),  but  he 
has  not  specified  its  age.  Then  one  (K)  of  the  Venetian  (Marc. 
522),  and  one  (O)  of  the  Vatican  (Vatic.  915),  which  have  been 
shown  by  Bergk  to  be  of  separate  and  considerable  value.  All 
the  rest  are  far  inferior  and  not  independent.  The  editio 


I92  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XI. 

princeps  is  the  Aldine  of  1495  (together  with  Theocritus,  Hesiod, 
&c.) ;  the  most  important  subsequently  are  those  of  Camerarius 
(1551),  of  Brunck  and  Gaisford  (as  Poetcz  Gnomici).  The 
critical  editions  are  by  Bekker(2nd  ed.,  Berlin,  1827),  Welcker 
(1826),  Orelli  (1840),  Ziegler  (1868),  and  in  Bergk's  Lyric  Poets. 
There  are  four  or  five  German  translations,  and  a  partial 
English  version  in  J.  H.  Frere's  Theognis  Restitutits  ( Works, 
vol.  iii.),  which  endeavours  to  construct  the  poet's  life  and 
opinions  from  his  poems  ;  but  the  whole  attempt  is  vitiated 
by  the  assumption  of  the  unity  of  authorship  of  our  text.  The 
somewhat  similar  speculation  of  O.  Miiller  in  his  History 
of  Greek  Literature  has  been  severely  handled  by  Bergk 
(Neties  Rhein.  Mus.  vol.  iii.  pp.  227). 

§  137.  We  may  here  fitly  sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  later 
history  of  the  elegy,  which  for  us  may  be  said  to  close  with 
Theognis.  There  were  indeed  many  other  elegiac  poets,  both 
Ionic  and  Attic,  of  whom  traces  still  remain,  but  to  us  they  are 
lost,  nor  have  we  reason  to  think  that  if  extant  they  would  occupy 
a  high  place  in  Greek  Literature.  The  last  important  poem 
of  the  species  in  older  days  was  the  Lyde  of  Antimachus, 
whose  learned  epic  was  above  mentioned  (§  109).  This  lament 
on  the  death  of  his  beloved  was  a  sort  of  In  Memoriam,  like  the 
great  poem  of  our  own  day,  passing  from  personal  grief  into 
larger  questions — but  in  Antimachus  questions  of  mythical  and 
genealogical  lore.  Though  good  critics  always  speak  of  the  poet 
as  laboured  and  pedantic,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  elegy, 
as  well  as  his  learned  epic,  had  great  influence  in  moulding  both 
the  epics  and  elegiacs  of  Alexandria,  where  these  cold  and 
formal  qualities  were  in  high  repute.  The  few  extant  lines  of 
the  Lyde  give  us  no  idea  of  the  poem.1  There  are  other  well- 
known  names  handed  down  to  us  as  having  composed  social 
elegies,  principally  at  Athens,  such  as  Ion  of  Chios,  Euenus  of 
Paros,  and  a  certain  Dionysius  (nicknamed  '  the  Copper '), 
from  all  of  whom  a  few  lines  survive  of  grace  and  of  elegant 
workmanship.  In  the  next  generation  the  notorious  CRITIAS, 
among  his  varied  literary  woik,  composed  political  elegies, 
or  descriptions  of  polities  (jroXtrtlai  epfitrpoi  is  their  title), 

1  Eergk,  FLG.  p.  610. 


CH.  XI.  THE  EPIGRAM.  193 

in  the  style,  though  far  removed  from  the  temper,  of  Solon, 
and  of  these  two  considerable  and  interesting  fragments  survive.1 
§  138.  An  elegiac  complaint  in  the  Andromache  ot  Euripides,2 
in  Doric  dialect,  is  a  curiosity  in  dramatic  literature.  But 
while  we  have  these  few  formal  representatives  of  sustained 
composition  in  elegiac  metre,  it  seems  that  with  Simonides 
came  in  the  fashion  of  composing  short  epigrams  of  a  votive 
character  on  monuments,  or  epitaphs  on  tombs,  for  which 
this  form  was  generally  adopted.  Those  of  Simonides  were 
most  famous,  but  in  the  later  collections  of  the  anthologies  we 
have  short  elegiac  inscriptions  attributed  to  all  manner  of  lite- 
rary men,  tragic  poets  like  ^schylus  and  Euripides,  lyric 
poets,  even  to  prose  writers  like  Thucydides  and  Plato.  The 
genuineness  of  these  little  pieces  is  always  a  very  difficult 
question  ;  but  that  the  general  fashion  prevailed,  and  that  various 
literary  men  amused  themselves  in  this  way,  apart  from  great 
competitions  for  public  dedications,  is  certain.  The  reader 

1  Frag.  2  :  Kal  rJS'  e6os  ^irdprr]  /teAerTj/ia  re  Keljj.ev6v  lanv, 

iriveiv  r\)v  avrrjv  olvo<p6pov  KvAj/ca, 
U7?8'  airo'Suipe'iaQa.i  trpoir6ffeis  ovofj.a.ar\  \eyovra, 

ju/rj8'  M  $e£trfpa.t>  x^Pa  KVK\OVV  Gidirou 

liyyea    ..... 

.  .  .  AvSr;  Xe^P  e^P'  'A-ff'aroyevfis, 
Hal  irpoir6<reis  opeytiv  «7r(Se'|(a,  Kal  irpoKa\e?ff9a,t 


elr'  airb  TOIOVTUIV  ir6fffeav  "y\<uffffas  re  Xvovcriv 

(Is  alffxpoiis  p.v9ovs,  cra/nd  T'  afj.avp6Tep'ji' 
TevXovfftv  '  irpbs  S'  o/i^tar'  d^Aus  a/j.^Kanrbs  t'</)i 

\rjffTis  8'  eKT-fiKei  fj.vn/j.oavi'T]i>  irpairifttav  • 
vovs  Se  TropeV^aArat  •  Spues  5'  d/f<$AaaTOp  fxov 

?lQos  •  fTreio"iritrTti  8'  o'tKOTpi^s  Scnrdvr]. 
ol  Aa/teSaijUOi/iW  8e  ic6pot  irivovcri  rocrovrov, 

Siffre  tppft>'  fls  i\apav  eAiriSo  VO.VT'  airdyft 
e5fs  re  (piXotypocrvi'rjv  •yAcotrcrov  /j.frpwv  re 

TOJOUTTJ  8e  Tr6cris  ffuftari  T'  w<pe\ifj.os 
yvdpy  re  icr-litrei  re  •  KaAis  8'  els  epy'  'AQpotiirris, 

irp6s  0'  virvov  rip/j.offrai,  rbv  Ka.fJ.druv  Aiyueva, 
irpbs  ryv  repirvora.rt]v  re  Qeiav  Qvjirols  'Yyieiav, 

Kal  r?V  Evffefli-r)s  yeirova  ~2<i><pp<>ffiii>r]i>>  K.T.\, 
-  w.  104.  "sq. 
VOL.  I.  —  9 


I94  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE.     CH.  XL 

will  find  in  Bergk's  Lyrici  many  such  epigrams  of  great  beauty 
under  the  authors  to  whom  they  were  attributed.  To  discuss 
them  together  is  rather  the  task  of  the  historian  of  post-classical 
literature.  For  the  Alexandrians  not  only  revived  the  Ionic 
elegy  in  the  hands  of  Callimachus,  Philetas,  Eratosthenes,  Par- 
thenius,  and  others,  but  exercised  their  wits  in  making  subtle 
epigrams  full  of  dainty  conceits.  These  are  well  worth  reading 
in  the  anthology,  where  they  are  confused  with  many  specimens 
of  older  and  simpler  work,  and  have  been  tastefully  reviewed  in  a 
special  chapter  of  Mr.  Symonds'  Greek  Poets.  The  erotic  elegy 
of  Callimachus,  Philetas  and  their  school  is  chiefly  interesting  as 
having  been  the  model  of  the  Roman  elegy,  which  is  one  of  the 
glories  of  Latin  literature  in  the  hands  of  Ovid,  Catullus,  Tibul- 
lus,  and  Propertius.  But  the  scanty  remains  of  Callimachus,1 
and  the  almost  total  loss  of  the  others,  relieve  me  of  the  neces- 
sity of  discussing  them  with  the  detail  I  have  allowed  to  Apol- 
lonius.  Yet  it  is  from  the  Alexandrian  and  Roman  elegy  that 
the  whole  modern  notion  of  that  kind  of  poem  has  been  de- 
rived. Thus  the  exceptional  Nanno  of  Mimnermus  was  more 
lasting  in  idea  than  the  far  more  ambitious  and  famous  works 
of  Solon  and  Theognis,  of  Xenophanes  and  Tyrtaeus. 

§  139.  While  the  elegy  had  taken  its  completed  pragmatical 
form  in  Theognis,  and  while,  as  we  shall  see,  Ibycus  and  Ana- 
creon  were  each  following  up  special  forms  of  lyric  poetry,  the 
iambic  metre,  of  which  we  hear  hardly  anything  since  the  elder 
Simonides,  revived  with  peculiar  modifications  under  the  hands 
of  HIPPONAX  of  Ephesus,  who  is  generally  mentioned  as  the 
third  iambic  poet  of  the  Greeks,  along  with  Archilochus  and 
Simonides.  He  lived  about  the  6oth  Ol.  at  Clazomense,  being 
exiled  from  his  native  town  by  the  tyrants  Athenagoras  and 
Comas,  and  was  chiefly  noted  for  his  scurrilous  poems  on 
Bupalus  and  Athenio,  the  celebrated  sculptors,  who  had  repre- 
sented or  exaggerated  his  personal  deformity  in  a  portrait  statue. 

1  One  elegy  on  the  annual  bathing  of  the  statue  of  Athene  at  Argos  in 
the  Inachus,  140  lines  in  Doric  dialect,  and  after  the  style  of  a  Homeric 
hymn,  on  the  adventures  of  Athene  in  Boeotia,  and  the  blinding  of  Teire- 
sias.  On  Callimachus,  cf.  above,  §  102. 


CH.  xt,  HIPP  ON  AX.  195 

He  seems,  however,  also  to  have  attacked  a  contemporary 
painter,  and  to  have  been  a  man  of  violent  hates,  and  of  an 
unhappy  life.  Ovid  (in  his  Ibis)  says  that  he  died  of  hunger, 
but  this  may  be  a  poetical  inference  from  the  complaints  of 
cold  and  hunger  in  his  extant  fragments,  which  German  critics 
take  seriously,  but  which  are  more  probably  the  comic  outbursts 
of  a  somewhat  low  and  pleasure-loving  nature,  as  we  may  guess 
from  the  many  allusions  to  cookery  quoted  from  him.  Though 
he  used  ordinary  iambic  trimeters,  tetrameters,  and  also  hexa- 
meters in  epic  parodies  (which  he  perhaps  invented),  his  distinc- 
tive feature  was  the  use  of  choliambics,  or  iambics  ending  with 
a  spondee,  which,  according  to  the  Germans,  gives  the  metre  a 
halting  low  plebeian  tone,  only  fit  for  vulgar  and  coarse  subjects. 
Nevertheless,  the  refined  Callimachus  and  Babrius  came  to  use 
it  for  short  fables  of  an  innocent  and  even  graceful  descrip- 
tion. There  is  no  poetic  beauty  in  the  extant  fragments, 
which  are  chiefly  cited  by  grammarians  either  for  peculiar 
customs,  such  as  the  sacrificing  of  (pap/iami — the  human  sin  offer- 
ings at  the  Thargelia,  or  for  hard  and  obscene  words,  probably 
local  or  slang  in  character.  Though  well-known  and  oft 
quoted,  Hipponax  naturally  formed  no  school,  but  there  are 
fragments  of  a  certain  Ananius,  who  wrote  in  the  same  metre, 
and  who  seems  to  have  lived  about  the  same  time.  The  con- 
stant invocations  of  Hermes  in  the  fragments  of  Hipponax  are 
remarkable,  and  point  to  some  unexplained  cause.  This  god 
may  possibly  have  been  the  favourite  deity  of  the  lower  classes 
in  Ionic  cities,  and  represented  in  the  streets,  as  we  know  was 
the  case  at  Athens.  The  names  of  the  later  choliambists  are 
not  worth  enumerating.1 

The  spirit  of  personal  satire  was  transmitted  to  Attic 
comedy,  which  is  generally  agreed  to  have  started  with  an 
iambic  vein,  and  in  its  political  days,  the  attacks  of  the 
comic  poets  on  leading  men,  or  on  notorious  libertines  at 
Athens  were  not  less  direct  and  angry  than  the  verses  of 

1  Cf.  Bergk,  FLG.  pp.  788,  sq.  Herodas  alone  is  still  of  interest,  and 
his  fragments  worth  reading.  But  his  date  is  variously  assigned  from  the 
age  of  Xenophon  to  that  of  Callimachus,  and  his  history  unknown. 


i$6  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XL 

Archilochus  and  Hipponax.  The  close  alliance  in  spirit  be- 
tween these  two  branches  of  Greek  poetry  is  further  illus- 
trated by  the  fact  that  Hermippus,  one  of  the  bitterest  oppo- 
nents of  Pericles  among  the  old  comic  poets,  was  also  the 
author  of  a  book  of  iambic  and  trochaic  poems,  often  quoted 
both  by  Athenaeus  and  the  scholiasts  on  Aristophanes.1  These 
poems  were  personal  attacks  of  the  same  kind  as  those  in  the 
parabasis  of  the  earlier  comedies,  but  here  even  in  form  imi- 
tated from  the  ancient  masters  of  satire  among  the  Greeks.2 

§  140.  The  most  striking  possible  contrast  to  Hipponax  was 
his  contemporary  ANACREON  of  Teos,  who  migrated  with  his 
townspeople  to  Abdera,  when  they  were  driven  out  by  Harpagus. 
From  thence  he  was  called  to  grace  the  court  of  Polycrates  of 
Samos,  then  the  greatest  man  in  the  Greek  world ;  and  after 
Polycrates's  murder  he  is  said  to  have  passed  his  old  age  with  the 
scarcely  less  splendid  Hipparchus  at  Athens.  Of  his  death 
nothing  certain  is  known.  Instead  of  the  low  virulence  and 
bitter  wants  of  Hipponax's  life,  we  have  here  an  accomplished 
courtier,  a  votary  of  love  and  wine,  a  man  who  enjoyed  every 
human  pleasure  to  the  full,  and  felt  no  trouble  save  the  touch 
of  silver  in  his  hair,  and  the  scorn  of  stately  youth  or  fair 
maiden  for  his  advancing  years.  He  concerned  himself  with  no 
politics  ;  he  gave  no  serious  advice  in  morals  ;  he  stands  aloof 
from  all  the  higher  aims  and  aspirations  of  his  age ;  he  was 
essentially  *  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day,'  the  minion  in 
poetry  of  a  luxurious  and  sensual  court.  The  vigorous  attack 
on  Artemon  (fr.  21)  seems  incited  by  erotic  jealousy;  the 
hymns  to  Dionysus,  who  is  with  him  as  prominent  as  Hermes 
with  Hipponax,  were  in  no  sense  religious,  but  worldly  compo- 
sitions. But  this  want  of  seriousness  reached  the  very  core  of 

1  Cf.  Meineke,  Hist.  Com.  p.  96. 

2  When  the  Romans  lay  claim  to  the  invention  of  satire,  as  their  sole 
originality  in  poetry,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  this  is  only  true  in  the 
peculiar  Roman  sense  of  satira,  as  a  poetical  medley,  such  as  the  satires  of 
Horace  and  Persius  ;  and  this  we  are  not  in  a  position  to  deny,  as  we  have 
lost  the  mimes  of  Sophron.     But  we  know  that  Sophron  was  the  model  of 
the  latter,  and  therefore  may  have  anticipated  this  phase  of  literature  also. 
To  say  that  satire,  in  the  other  and  now  received  sense,  was  invented  by 
Ihe  Romans  is  quite  ridiculous. 


CH.  XL  ANACREON.  197 

his  nature.  His  praise  of  love  and  of  wine  are  not  the  passion- 
ate outbursts  of  Archilochus  or  Alcaeus,  but  the  elegant  encomia 
of  an  Aristippus,  who  lays  hold  of  pleasure,  but  is  not  held  by 
it.  The  glow  of  passion  and  the  pang  of  grief  could  not  agitate 
that  worldly  and  selfish  soul,  even  though  he  ventures  to  assert 
'  that  Eros  struck  at  him  with  a  mighty  axe,  and  plunged  him 
in  a  wintry  torrent.'  The  great  body  of  his  fragments,  and  the 
numerous  copies  of  his  poems,  speak  of  love  as  an  engrossing 
amusement,  of  feasting  as  spoilt  by  earnest  conversation,  nay 
even  of  old  age  with  a  sort  of  jovial  regret,  very  different  from 
the  dark  laments  of  the  earnest  Mimnermus.1  The  poetry  of 
Anacreon  is  no  longer  the  outburst  of  pent-up  passion,  but  the 
exercise  of  a  graceful  talent,  the  ornament  of  a  luxurious 
leisure.  Had  the  court  of  Augustus  not  affected  moral  reforms 
and  national  aims,  we  should  have  had  in  Horace  a  very  simi- 
lar poet  In  both  the  very  absence  of  intensity  permitted  a 
peculiar  polish  and  grace  of  form,  so  much  so,  that  no  Greek  poet 
excels  Anacreon  in  the  variety  and  elegance  of  his  metres,  or  in 
the  purity  of  his  diction. 

It  was  for  this  very  reason,  because  perfect  form  was 
combined  with  trivial  and  shallow  sentiment,  that  the  poe- 
tasters of  a  worn-out  culture  chose  him  above  all  others  as 
their  most  suitable  model.  For  a  long  time  the  Anacreontics 
composed  in  the  schools  of  the  fourth  century  A.D.,  especi- 
ally at  Gaza,  imposed  their  conceits  upon  the  world  as  the 
work  of  Anacreon — an  imposture  of  which  the  brilliant  trans- 
lations of  Thomas  Moore  are  a  happy  result,  but  an  impos- 
ture inconceivable  had  they  attempted  to  copy  the  redhot 
aristocrats,  whose  lyrics  spoke  their  troubled  and  turbulent 
life.  I  will  not  discuss  these  well-known  love  poems,  which 
were  printed  repeatedly  with  great  elegance  at  Parma  and  at 
Rome  in  the  last  century,  so  much  so  that  they  have  become 
of  considerable  value  to  lovers  of  beautiful  books.  The  Roman 
reproduction  in  plates  and  in  type  of  the  eleventh  century 
Palatine  MS.  (Spaletti,  1781)  is  particularly  interesting.  They 

1  They  are  elegantly  characterised  by  Critias  (in  his  7th  extant  fragment, 
Bergk,  p.  605)  as  <rv/j.irofficav  fpe6i<rfj.a,  •yvvaiKuv  TjTrepJiret^to,  av\uy 
v,  i]8vv,  &\VTTOV. 


1 93  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XI. 

are  again  edited  with  more  care  than  they  deserve  by  Val.  Rose 
and  by  Bergk,  though  they  are  not  without  a  certain  elegance, 
and  have  produced  innumerable  translations  and  imitations. 
To  us  they  are  chiefly  useful  as  evidences  of  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  the  complete  works  of  Anacreon  upon  the  schools 
which  studied  him. 

In  form  Anacreon  belongs  to  the  ^Eolic  school  of  Sappho  and 
Alcaeus,  and  his  poems  were  sung  without  chorus  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  a  lyre  of  twenty  strings.  His  verses  were  mono- 
strophic,  like  theirs,  repeating  simple  but  varied  rythms,  mixed 
iambics,  choriambics,  and  tribrachs,  after  the  manner  of  the 
verses  of  our  modern  songs.  But  he  seems  to  have  avoided 
the  special  metres  called  by  us  Alcaic  and  Sapphic,  and  to  have 
preferred  glyconics.  In  adopting  this  simple  and  personal 
form  of  the  y£olic  bards,  he  was  led  by  a  truer  instinct  than  his 
contemporary  Ibycus,  who  attempted  to  combine  the  erotic  tone 
of  the  Lesbian  school  with  the  choral  lyric  form  of  the  Dorians. 
But  it  will  be  better  to  class  Ibycus  with  the  latter  and  we 
shall  accordingly  return  to  him. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  PUBLIC  LYRIC  POETRY  OF  THE 

§  141.  WE  have  already  recognised  the  first  beginnings  of  this 
strictly  Greek  form  of  poetry  in  our  notice  of  Alcman,  though 
personal  allusions  are  still  frequent  in  his  fragments,  and  his 
provincial  character  was  noted  in  contrast  to  the  broader  fea- 
tures of  his  successors.  The  first  of  these  who  is  sufficiently 
important  for  this  brief  history  is  ARION  of  .Methymna,  specially 
celebrated  as  having  organised  the  dithyrambic1  choruses  in 
honour  of  Dionysus,  whose  worship,  orgiastic  and  oriental  in 
character,  had  hitherto  been  unsanctioned  by  either  states  or 
literary  men,  but  was  popular  about  the  Isthmus.  He  arranged 
the  chorus  of  fifty,  so  as  to  produce  antisrrophic  effects,  and 
brought  into  use  dancing — the  science  of  orchestic — as  sub- 
sidiary to  music  and  poetry.  Historians  of  the  drama  have 
laid  great  stress  on  this  improvement  of  the  popular  dithyramb. 
Arion  was  the  first  to  introduce  it  into  a  Doric  town,  Corinth, 
and  to  give  the  chorus  an  artistic  form,  called  cyclic,  which  was 
not  changed  till  Thespis  rearranged  his  tragic  chorus  to  a  square 
form.  It  seems,  furthermore,  that  the  dithyrambic  choruses  of 
Arion  were  not  wildly  joyous  and  licentious,  like  the  original 
country  dances  which  were  his  model,  but  honoured  Dionysus 
as  Zagreus,  or  god  of  the  nether  world,  in  a  solemn  Doric  tone. 
Arion  is  even  called  the  inventor  of  the  tragic  tropos,  which 
corresponded  to  the  IppeXeia,  or  solemn  dance  of  subsequent 
tragedy.  It  seems  that  his  cyclic  chorus  did  not  wear  masks, 

1  The  derivation  of  the  word  dithyrambos,  which  appears  to  have  been 
another  name  for  Dionysus,  is  not  yet  satisfactorily  explained.  It  was 
always  used  to  designate  those  mimic  combinations  of  music,  poetry,  and 
dancing  which  were  performed  in  honour  of  the  god. 


200  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH  xir. 

but  was  a  serious  body  of  men,  so  that  the  dithyramb  assumed 
in  his  hands  something  of  the  dignity  of  the  choral  worship  of 
Apollo.  The  rude  wild  dithyramb  of  the  country  folks  no 
doubt  still  subsisted,  but  Arion  created  a  new  literary  form. 

These  important  innovations  are  indirect  inferences,  in  some 
cases  not  very  certain,  from  the  stray  notes  surviving  about  his 
literary  position,  which  is  little  discussed  by  the  ancients. 
Yet  his  personal  fame  was  very  great,  as  appears  from  the 
story  of  his  being  compelled  by  sailors,  who  coveted  his 
amassed  wealth,  to  jump  into  the  sea  on  his  return  route  from 
Italy,  when  a  dolphin  carried  him  to  Taenarum.  He  re- 
appeared at  the  court  of  Periander,  to  the  dismay  of  his  would-be 
murderers.  He  seems,  in  fact,  as  intimate  with  Periander  as 
Anacreon  was  with  Polycrates.  This  fixes  his  date,  and  he 
is  besides  called  a  pupil  of  Alcman.  As  to  the  story  of  the 
dolphin,  our  evidence  for  it  is  curiously  old  and  respect- 
able. There  is  the  charming  narrative  of  Herodotus  (i.  23), 
who  mentions  the  figure  of  the  poet  on  a  dolphin,  dedicated  at 
Tsenarum.  This  figure  was  well  known,  and  was  copied,  or 
paralleled,  by  numerous  coins  of  Methymna,  Corinth,  Tarentum, 
Brundusium,  and  other  cities  in  Italy.  Legends  of  Tarentum, 
however,  connect  both  Taras  and  Phalanthus  in  a  similar  way 
with  dolphins,  so  that  we  cannot  be  sure  that  all  the  coins 
represent  Arion.  But  ^Elian,  in  repeating  the  story,  quotes  a 
passage  from  Arion  himself,  distinctly  alleging  the  facts.  This 
elegant  poem  l  has  been,  of  course,  declared  spurious,  because 


yaidox'  tyKVfjLov'  ch>'  a\/j,av. 
Ppayx'tois  irepl  Sf  at  irKtarol 
Or/pss  xopevovcn  K\>K\cp, 

Ko6<pOlffl  TTOS&V  pifJLfJLafflV 

e\d<f>p'  a.vaira\\6nevoi,  ffi/J.ol, 

<j>pl^a.VXfVtS,  UKl>SpO/J.Ol  ffKV\HKtS,  (pl\6/J.OV(TOl 

Se\<}Hves,  £va\a  0pf/j.fj.ara 

Kovpav  Nrjpet'Scoi/  Qeav, 

fis  eyfivar'  'ApcpiTpira  • 

o'i  fj.'  fls  Tle\OTros  yav  tirl  faivapiav 


KvpTo7ffi  VUTOIS  oxfvvres, 


en.  xii.  SONGS  OF  THE  SEVEN   WISE  MEN.  201 

it  asserts  a  miracle,  or  because  it  is  unworthy  of  such  a  poet  as 
Arion — that  poet's  works  being  otherwise  unknown  !  ! — or  be- 
cause it  is  supposed  to  contain  modernisms.  All  these"  are 
matters  of  opinion,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  absence  of  any  men- 
tion of  the  poem  by  earlier  authorities  makes  me  doubt  its 
genuineness,  though  I  suspect  it  must  be  the  ancient  work  of 
some  immediate  pupil,  who  passed  it  off  as  the  poet's  own. 

It  has  not,  I  think,  been  suggested  that  the  close  con- 
nection  between  Arion  and  the  cult  of  Dionysus  may  have 
suggested  the  dolphin  legend,  for  we  see  from  the  Homeric 
hymn  to  Dionysus  (above,  p.  135)  how  that  god  was  early 
identified  with  marine  adventure,  and  more  especially  with 
dolphins,  as  a  sort  of  sporting  sea  satyrs,  whose  gambollings 
might  be  thought  analogous  to  a  dancing  chorus. 

§  142.  There  is  yet  another  alleged  composer  of  tragic  choruses 
— like  Arion's,  whose  work  Herodotus  notices  in  one  of  his 
precious  literary  digressions  —  Epigenes  of  Sicyon.  Hero- 
dotus says  that  the  Sicyonians  honoured  Adrastus  in  every 
possible  way,  and  even  celebrated  his  sufferings  in  tragic 
choruses,  honouring  not  Dionysus,  but  Adrastus.  Cleisthenes, 
for  political  reasons,  restored  the  due  honours  to  the  god. 
But  this  early  attempt  to  substitute  a  mortal  hero's  sufferings 
for  those  of  Dionysus  is  a  curious  anticipation  of  the  great  stride 
to  tragedy  made  in  Attica  at  the  close  of  the  same  century. 

§  143.  Before  passing  on,  a  word  may  be  said  on  the  melic 
fragments  quoted  by  Diogenes  Laertius,  as  the  most  favourite  of 
the  songs  composed  by  the  seven  wise  men.  He  cites  with  this 
formula  (rutv  tie  d^ojueVwv  poX«mi  tv&xlftqinv  avrov  ra^e)  from 
Pittacus,  Bias,  Chilo,  Thales,  and  Cleobulus.  The  metres  are 
dactyls  and  trochees  combined  in  logooedic  manner.  The  dic- 
tion seems  antique.  Yet  I  agree  with  the  sceptical  critics 
who  deny  their  genuineness.  Diogenes  borrowed  most  of 
them  from  the  book  of  the  Argive  Lobo,  about  whose  age  or 
authority  we  know  nothing. 

&AOKCS  Nrjpe'I'as  7rAa/cc>s 
rffj.vovrfs,  affrifii)  Trdpov,  0c«Tes  SoXioj 
Sis  fjC  a<£'  aA.i7rA.oou  y\a(f)vpas  vfias 
els  oIS^u.'  a\iir6p<j)vpov  Ai'/ti/as  fpiiftay. 

9* 


202  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XII. 

§  144.  The  inscription  of  Echembrotus  the  Arcadian,  quoted 
by  Pausanias  from  a  tripod  at  Thebes,  is  genuine,  and  relates  that 
this  man  contended  at  Delphi  (evidently  after  the  wide  growth 
of  the  festival)  and  composed,  for  the  Hellenes,  songs  and  elegies. 
But  his  date  is  unknown.  Another  poet,  Xanthus,  is  distinctly 
mentioned  as  older  than  Stesichorus,  and  his  model  in  some 
things.  But  he  too  is  a  mere  name,  and  only  serves  us  to 
introduce  his  successor. 

§  145.  STESICHORUS  of  Himera  was  a  great  figure  in  Greek 
literature,  and  evidently  a  man  of  the  first  importance,  but  his 
fragments,  though  numerous  (above  50),  do  not  afford  us  the 
materials  for  an  independent  judgment  His  family  was  said  to 
proceed  from  the  Locrian  colony  Metaurus  in  Sicily,  and,  as  we 
have  seen  (p.  105,  note),  the  Locrian  legends  connect  him  with 
Hesiod.  His  original  name  is  said  by  Suidas  to  have  been 
Tisias.  He  lived  about  630-550  B.C.,  and  appears  to  have  died 
at  an  advanced  age  in  Catana,  where  a  curious  octagon  monu- 
ment, with  eight  pillars  and  eight  steps,  marked  his  tomb.  As 
the  oldest  poet  of  Sicily,  he  was  specially  distinguished.  More 
particularly  he  is  praised  for  his  Homeric  tone,  and  only  slightly 
censured  by  the  later  Roman  rhetoricians  for  redundancy. 
His  poems  once  comprised  twenty-six  books,  of  which  a 
group  of  twelve  poems  with  epic  titles  is  specially  noticed, 
such  as  Eriphyla,  the  Fall  of  Troy,  Helena,  the  Oresteia,  &c. ; 
of  these  we  shall  speak  again.  There  were  also  religious 
poems,  of  which  we  know  very  little ;  songs  of  revelry,  sung  in 
Athens  at  wine-parties  ;  bucolic  love  poems  about  shepherds 
(particularly  Daphnis),  which  are  called  by  ^lian  the  fore- 
runners of  Theocritus'  poetry,  and  lastly  love  stories  in  verse, 
which  seem  to  have  been  unlike  anything  in  Greek  literature, 
except  the  Milesian  tales,  and  their  successors,  the  late  Greek 
novels.  Of  these  the  Kalyke,  much  in  fashion  among  women, 
told  of  that  maiden  being  enamoured  of  a  you'.h,  and  praying 
to  Aphrodite  that  she  might  be  joined  to  him  in  lawful  wed- 
lock ;  but  when  her  desire  could  not  be  accomplished,  she  took 
away  her  own  life.  This  sentimental  poetic  novel  was  re- 
markable for  its  moral  tone,  and  indeed  all  Stesichorus'  poetry 
produces  the  same  impression. 


CH.  xir.  STESICHORUS.  203 

§  146.  His  position  in  the  history  of  Greek  religion  is  very 
important,  for  finding  the  taste  for  epic  recitation  decaying,  he 
undertook  to  reproduce  epic  stories  in  lyric  dress,  and  present 
the  substance  of  the  old  epics  in  rich  and  varied  metres,  and 
with  the  measured  movements  of  a  trained  chorus.  This  was 
a  direct  step  to  the  drama,  for  when  any  one  member  of  the 
chorus  came  to  stand  apart  and  address  the  rest  of  the  choir, 
\ve  have  already  the  essence  of  Greek  tragedy  before  us.  He 
added  to  the  strophe  and  antistrophe  the  epode,  and  so  gave 
choral  lyric  poetry  the  complete  form,  found  in  Pindar  and  the 
tragic  choruses.  But  apart  from  these  formal  changes,  he  freely 
altered  and  modified  the  substance  of  the  legends,  or  perhaps 
brought  into  notoriety  old  and  little-known  variations  which  from 
his  day  became  popular,  and  passed  into  Attic  tragedy.  To  judge 
from  like  variations  in  Pindar,  some  of  these  changes  were 
suggested  by  moral  reasons,  but  possibly  most  of  them  merely 
by  a  love  of  variety,  and  of  refreshing  the  somewhat  worn-out 
epic  legends.  On  the  siege  of  Troy  especially  he  differed 
much  from  our  Homer,  and  his  famous  palinodia  about  Helen 
gave  rise  to  the  most  celebrated  story  about  him.1  He  had,  in 
the  opening  of  a  poem,  spoken  disparagingly  of  the  heroine, 
who  struck  him  with  blindness.  He  then  composed  his  re- 
cantation (the  'EAo'a),  which  asserted  that  not  the  real  but  a 
phantom  Helen  had  gone  to  Troy  (a  legend  recurring  in 
Euripides'  Helena],  and  he  accordingly  recovered  his  sight.2 

The  poet  was  apparently  no  politician,  though  his  apologue  ot 
the  horse  who  called  in  a  rider  to  help  him  against  the  stag  was 
reported  to  have  been  composed  for  the  citizens  of  Agrigentum, 
to  open  their  eyes  to  the  danger  of  giving  Phalaris  the  power 

1  From  the  authorities  cited  by  Bergk  (FLG.  p.  981),  it  appears  that 
Plato  (Pha:d.  243  A)  is  our  earliest  authority  for  the  legend  ;  then  Iso- 
crates  (in  his  Encom.  JHel.  p.  64).     But  the  fullest  account  is  in  Pausanias 
(iii.   19.    n).      A  host  of  other  allusions  is  also  cited.     It  is  important 
to  obsarve,  that  among  them  a  scholion  on  Lycophron  speaks  of  Hesiod  as 
the  first  deviser  of  the  story  of  an  ei5ta\ov  of  Helen. 

2  The  first  lines  of  this  palinodia  have  survived  : — 

OVK  COT'  trvfios  \6yos  OVTOS, 
oi>8'  fj3as  ff  vavarlv  f 
ov8'  '//ceo  Tlfpyafta  Tpolas. 


204  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XIL 

which  he  aftenvards  so  grievously  misused.  The  language  of 
Stesichorus,  as  befitted  public  choral  poetry,  was  not  a  local 
idiom,  and  is  seldom  quoted  as  peculiar  by  the  grammarians, 
but  is  epic  in  tone,  and  pure  and  classical  in  its  diction. 
Unfortunately,  his  fragments,  chiefly  cited  for  new  versions  of 
legends,  are  more  barren  than  usual  for  us;  nor  is  there  any 
poet  of  whom  so  much  has  remained  who  now  presents  so 
indefinite  and  vague  a  figure  in  Greek  literature.  But  he  has 
a  certain  family  likeness  to  Pindar,  whose  4th  Pythian  ode  is 
probably  similar  in  type  to  his  poems  on  epic  subjects. 

§  147.  The  remains  of  the  poet  IBYCUS  are  of  a  far  more 
definite  complexion.  This  poet,  a  native  of  Rhegium,  flourished 
about  Ol.  60,  and  has  been  variously  regarded  as  a  successor 
of  StesichoniSj  and  as  an  offshoot  of  the  ^Eolic  school.  There 
are  strong  reasons  for  both  these  views,  but  that  which  main- 
tains the  former  is,  in  my  opinion,  the  more  correct.  The 
poems  of  Ibycus  were  essentially  choral  poems,  and  intended 
for  public  performances.  They  have  the  complicated  structure 
of  Stesichorus'  poems,  and  some  fragments  on  epic  subjects 
ascribed  in  turn  to  either  poet,  show  how  strong  was  the  simi- 
larity between  them.  There  are  indeed  a  great  many  references 
in  geographers  and  scholiasts  to  Ibycus  as  an  authority  on  epic 
legends.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  exceedingly  glowing  and 
beautiful  confessions  of  love,  and  the  fact  that  these  were  some- 
times addressed  to  individual  youths,  seem  to  place  the  poet 
among  the  personal  lyrists  of  the  ^Eolic  school,  and  suggest 
that  he  should  be  treated  along  with  Sappho  and  Anacreon. 

It  has  been  surmised  that  these  love  poems  were  not 
really  personal,  that  the  Chalcidians  had  of  old  contests  of 
beauty  among  boys,  and  openly  legalised  the  love  of  them, 
and  that  Ibycus  composed  these  passionate  addresses  as  the 
public  expression  of  the  love  of  beauty  among  his  fellow- 
citizens,  so  that  we  have  here  a  literary  effort  even  more 
artificial  and  self-conscious  than  the  philosophic  gaiety  of 
Anacreon.  But  such  excessive  refinements  are  surely  an  ana- 
chronism in  Ibycus'  age,  and  we  ought  rather  to  regard  his 
poetry  as  a  very  important  attempt  to  combine  the  chief  merits 
of  the  ^olic  school  with  the  richer  and  more  popular  forms  of 


en.  xii.  IBYCUS.  205 

die  Doric  choral  poetry.  We  know  that  many  of  his  poems 
were  of  this  strictly  Stesichorean  character,  and  it  does  not  at 
all  appear  that  he  devoted  himself  wholly  to  love,  like  Sappho, 
or  that  he  touched  politics,  like  Alcaeus.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  find  the  feeling  of  love  almost  avoided  by  the  public  choral 
lyrics,  so  that  these  fragments  stand  out  in  peculiar  relief.  It  is 
very  remarkable  that  this  noble  attempt  of  Ibyctis  did  not  find 
imitators.  Anacreon  and  Ibycus  are  the  last  Greek  poets 
who  touched  these  magic  chords  in  human  nature.  The 
poetry  of  love  disappears  (except  in  skolia)  during  the  period 
of  the  political  greatness  of  Greece,  and  only  revives  as  an 
artificial  plant  in  the  decay  of  its  literature.  It  may  have  been 
felt  that  such  personal  and  private  feelings  were  unsuitable  to 
public  choirs,  and  the  artistic  sense  of  the  Greeks  may  have 
forbidden  such  a  combination.  When  this  artistic  sense  was 
rapidly  developing  the  rich  antistrophic  periods,  and  various 
metres,  with  orchestic  to  expound  them  to  the  eye  as  well  as  to 
the  ear — it  may  have  been  felt  that  these  complicated  forms 
were  greater  and  more  national  than  the  simple  songs  of  Sappho 
and  Anacreon,  however  pathetic  and  beautiful  these  latter 
might  be.  So  it  came  that  Ibycus,  who  is  quoted  with  great 
enthusiasm  by  Athenaeus,  and  other  critics  of  late  date,  is  not, 
so  far  as  I  can  remember,  commonly  praised  among  the  an- 
cients, or  placed  at  all  on  the  level  with  Stesichorus.  To  us 
the  extant  fragments  justify  the  reversing  of  this  judgment, 
those  of  Ibycus  being  exceptionally  beautiful.1 

The  legend  of  the  cranes  which  exposed  his  murderers  has 
been  best  told  in  a  famous  poem  by  Schiller,  but  does  not  rest 
on  any  very  ancient  authority. 

1  Frag.  2  :    "Epos  avre  /ue  Kvavfouriv  uirb  &\t<p<ipois  raKep'  ofj.jj.affi 

SepK6/j.evos 

Kri\r)/J.a,<n  TravToSaTrols  fs  &iretpa  SIKTVO.  KvirpiSi  /3aAAet  • 
?l  p.a.v  TpOf.'.tea  viv  firep^fievov, 

(j>epe£vyos  'lirnos  ae8\o<{>6pos  trorl  y-fjpat 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  AGE  OF  SIMONIDES  AND   PINDAR. 

§  148.  WE  come  at  last  to  the  two  great  masters  of  what 
the  Germans  call  universal  melic,  Shnonides  and  Pindar.  Uni- 
versal melic  implies  that  these  men  rose  above  all  local 
idioms  and  parochial  interests,  and  were  acknowledged  as 
national  poets *  and  composers  of  all  sorts  of  lyric  poetry.  It 
must,  however,  be  remembered,  in  limitation  of  these  notions, 
that  the  love-songs  of  the  ^Eolic  school  are  not  reproduced, 
that  the  personal  experiences  of  the  poet  are  no  longer  promi- 
nent, and  that  these  men  distinctly  represent  the  triumph  of 
the  public  lyrics  over  the  personal  lyrics  of  earlier  schools. 
This  change  was  either  the  cause  or  the  effect,  or  both,  of  a 
changed  social  position  in  the  poets  themselves.  Neither 
Simonides  nor  Pindar  has  anything  in  common  with  the  tur- 
bulent aristocrats  of  earlier  lyric  days.  The  rise  and  pre- 
valence of  tyrants  in  Greece,  and  their  desire  of  spreading  cul- 
ture about  them,  had  created  a  demand,  and  a  comfortable 
prospect,  for  professional  court  poets,  of  whom  Anacreon  has 
already  been  noticed  as  a  specimen.  Thus  both  Simonides 
and  Pindar  lived  and  composed  at  the  courts  of  tyrants.  But 
fortunately  for  them  their  epoch  coincided  with  the  outburst  of 
democracy  after  the  Persian  wars,  and  the  rise  of  free  states 
which  could  rival  the  tyrants  in  patronising  letters.  Thus  we 
iind  these  distinguished  men  equal  favourites  with  despots  and 
with  their  bitterest  enemies,  and  we  can  see  how  carefully  they 
must  have  avoided  politics.  In  the  great  national  contest 
against  Persia,  Simonides  took  part  by  his  numerous  elegies 

1  This  claim  is,  however,  made  by  an  earlier  poet,  Echembrotus,  the 
Arcadian  ;  cf.  above,  p.  202. 


CH.  xiii.  SIMON1DES.  207 

and  epigra.-ns,1  for  which  he  seems  to  have  revived  the  elegiac 
metre,  which  had  fallen  into  disuse  for  philosophical  and  moral 
purposes.  But  Pindar,  whose  city  had  taken  the  wrong  side, 
and  had  Medized,  was  unable  to  glorify  the  Greek  cause  ade- 
quately at  the  expense  of  the  Thebans,  and  hence  Simonides 
maintained,  among  his  contemporaries,  a  higher  reputation. 

SIMONIDES,  son  of  Leoprepes,  was  born  at  lulis,  on  the 
island  of  Keos-^an  island  afterwards  noted  for  good  laws  and 
for  culture — and  was  consequently  distinguished  from  his  older 
namesake  as  u  Ktloc.  As  his  life  reached  from  556  to  469  B.C., 
he  may  be  said  to  have  lived  through  the  most  glorious  and 
certainly  the  most  eventful  period  of  Greek  history.  Coming 
forward  at  a  time  when  the  tyrants  had  made  poetry  a  matter 
of  culture,  and  dissociated  it  from  politics,  we  find  him  a  pro- 
fessional artist,  free  from  all  party  struggles,  alike  welcome  at 
the  courts  of  tyrants  and  among  the -citizens  of  free  states;  he 
was  respected  throughout  all  the  Greek  world,  and  knew  well 
how  to  suit  himself,  socially  and  artistically,  to  his  patrons. 
The  great  national  struggle  with  Persia  gave  him  the  oppor- 
tunity of  becoming  the  spokesman  of  the  nation,  in  celebrating 
the  glories  of  the  victors,  and  the  heroism  of  the  fallen  patriots. 
This  exceptional  opportunity  made  him  quite  the  foremost 
poet  of  his  day,  and  decidedly  better  known  and  more  admired 
than  Pindar,  who  has  so  completely  eclipsed  him  in  the  atten- 
tion of  posterity.  In  one  department  of  poetry,  in  his  elegies 
and  epigrams,  he  indeed  always  held  the  foremost  rank,  but 
the  sacerdotal  and  grandiloquent  splendour  of  Pindar  has 
long  gained  the  day  over  the  smoother  and  more  worldly 
compositions  of  Simonides,  which  were  more  obvious  and  are 
believed  to  have  been  less  profound.  He  wrote  concerning 
Lycurgus,  and  his  influence  on  Sparta,  probably  in  some  choral 
piece  intended  for  recitation  there.  He  was  intimate  with  both 
Pausanias  and  Themistocles  ;  he  was  long  the  favourite  leader 
of  the  cyclic  choruses  (in  spite  of  his  plain  appearance)  and  com- 
poser of  dithyrambic  hymns  at  the  Dionysiac  festivals,  which 
had  become  popular  since  the  days  of  Peisistratus.  He  was 
intimate  with  the  Skopadse,  the  hereditary  grandees  of  Thessaly, 

1  Fragg   90-110. 


2oS        HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  XIIL 

who  may  have  been  far  behind  Athenian  culture,  but  were  able 
to  pay  princely  fees  for  the  praise  even  of  their  dogs.  He  was 
also  intimate  with  the  great  tyrants  in  Sicily,  with  Theron  and 
Hieron,  whose  quarrels  he  allayed  by  his  prudent  advice.  It 
seems  that  anyone  could  purchase  his  services,  and  this  purely 
professional  attitude  appeared  mean  to  most  Greeks  when 
compared  with  the  red-hot  passion  of  the  old  aristocratic  lyrist, 
or  the  national  importance  of  the  Attic  dramatist,  whose  aims 
were  far  above  pecuniary  rewards. 

Most  unfortunately  we  have  no  complete  poem  (save 
epigrams  and  epitaphs)  now  remaining  from  this  great  poet  ; 
but  the  exquisite  beauty,  the  pellucid  clearness,  and  the  deep 
but  chastened  pathos  of  his  fragments  make  us  wish  to  ex- 
change a  few  of  Pindar's  more  laboured  odes  for  the  master- 
pieces of  his  rival.  Besides  sepulchral  inscriptions,  we  have 
remains  of  Epinikia,  of  Hymns,  Dithyrambs,  Parthenia,  Hy- 
porchemes,  and  Threni,  or  laments.  Our  finest  fragments  be- 
long to  the  latter,  and  lead  us  to  suppose  .that  pathos  was  the 
peculiar  gift  in  which  he  excelled.  It  was  that  calm  and  digni- 
fied grief  which  is  so  marked  a  feature  in  the  monumental  art 
of  the  Greeks,  and  of  which  the  specimens  in  sculpture  reach 
from  the  Attic  tomb  reliefs  to  the  famous  Laocoon. 

Simonides  was,  moreover,  famed  for  wise  and  wnty  sayings, 
and  paid  attention  to  the  art  of  mnemonics.  His  modifications 
of  the  Greek  alphabet  point  rather  to  his  having  brought  ad- 
ditional letters,  already  known,  into  fashion  in  monumental 
inscriptions,  than  to  his  being  the  actual  discoverer.  He  de- 
scribed poetry  as  word-painting,  a  remark  with  which  Lessing 
opens  his  Laocoon,  and  styles  Simonides  '  the  Greek  Voltaire,' 
a  very  unhappy  comparison.  Of  the  great  number  of  epigrams 
handed  down  to  us  in  the  Anthology  under  his  name,  many  are 
doubtless  spurious,  nor  is  it  easy  to  detect  a  clever  imitator  in 
such  short  and  simple  pieces,  where  a  far  inferior  poet  might 
often  succeed  in  rivalling  his  master.  Some  of  them  however 
are  attested  by  indubitable  authority,  such  as  that  of  Herodotus, 
or  by  respectable  scholiasts.  These  are  rather  remarkable  for 
extreme  simplicity  and  for  an  avoidance  of  the  conceits  of 


CH.  xiir.  SIMONIDES.  209 

later  epigrammatists.1  But  in  any  case  they  are  of  inferior  in- 
tere  st  to  the  fragments  of  his  greater  poems,  as,  for  example, 
the  exquisite  lament  of  Danae.  2 

Apart  from  his  splendid  expressions  of  nationality  and  of 
patriotism,3  there  is,  apparently  for  the  reasons  above  cited,  an 
avoidance  of  politics  in  the  remains  of  Simonides.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  find  a  considerable  advance  in  the  critical  and 
philosophical  temper  which  pervades  them.  He  dissects  and 
censures  the  current  saws  of  elder  sages,4  and  sometimes 

His  high  esteem  for  terse  clear  utterance,  as  a  privilege  of  Greeks 
and  of  educated  men,  appears  from  the  proverbs  about  his  naKpbs  \6yos 
(cf.  Bergk,  frag.  189). 

2  Frag.  37  :  "Ore  Ka.pva.Ki  ev  SaiuaAe'a  ave/j.6s  re  (iiy 

KlVllQelffO.   T6   \lfJiVa 

5c//xar<  tfpnrev,  OVK  aSiavrouri  irapetais 

a/j.(pi  re  Tlepcrel  fid\\e  <j>l\av  %f'pa 

eT-Tre  re  •  £>  re/cos,  olov  %xu  ir6vov  ' 

<rv  8'  aure'is  ya\a9rjvy  T'  ijBei  Kvwffffeis  ev  arepirti 

§aifj.a.Ti  xa^Ke°y6tJ-<t><i>, 

i>vKTi\a/j.ire'i  icvavfcp  re  5v6<f>y  ravvadfis, 

a.va\eav  5'  virepGe  reav  K6fj.a.v  j3a0€?oj/ 

Trapi6vTOs  KV/J.O.TOS  OVK  a\fyeis, 


Kei/J.tvos  ev  iroptyvpeq.  x^viSi,  trp6ff<aTTOV  Ka\6v. 

El  Se  rol  Sewbv  r6  ye  Seivbv  fjv, 

KO.I  Kev  f/j.<av  pr\fjLa.ruv  \eirrbv  virelxes  o5as. 

Kf\ofj.ai  5'  euSe  flpefyos,  euSerca  5e  ir6i>TOs, 

euSerai  8'  tjurpov  Ka.K.6v  ' 

/j.eTaifto\ia  lie  rts  tyaveit],  Zev  irdrep, 

fK  aeo  •  OTTI  5e  dapffa\eov  tiros 

ftixopai,  reKv6(pi  SiKav  ffvyyvcaOi  pot. 

8  Frag.  4  :  To))/  ev  @epfj.oirv\ais  QavAvrtav 

evicXeris  fj.ev  a  ri/xa,  Ka\bs  8'  o  TT^T^OS, 
@ca/j.bs  6'  6  rdtpos,  irpb  y6tav  8e  /uj/airrty,  o  8    otaroj  "Tratvos. 
evrafyiov  Se  TOIOVTOV  evpws 
o{;0'  6  iraj/Sa/xarajp  apavpucrei  \p6vos. 
avSpu/v  8'  ayaBiov  35e  cranks  olxfray  ev5of/iav 
'E\\d5os  ei'Aero  •  fiaprvpe?  Se  AewviSas 
6  Sirapras  flacritevs,  aperaj  fueyav  \e\oiv<as 
KOfffJ-ov  aevaov  re  K\e7os. 

4  See  also  among  his  &TO.KTOI  \6yot,  or  '  wit  and  wisdom,'  the  advice 
(frag.  192)  Trailed'  ev  T£  @icp  Ka.1  irepl  /ii/Sej/  air\us  a"irovo'd£eiit 


2io       HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.       CH.  xiir. 

repeats  them  in  a  finer  and  richer  form.  Thus  Hesiod's 
famous  lines  on  the  '  narrow  way  that  leadeth  unto  virtue  ' 
are  beautifully  rendered.1  But  the  leading  feature  in  his  philo- 
sophy seems  a  gentle  and  resigned  fatalism,  dwelling  patiently 
on  the  weakness  and  the  ills  of  men,  and  the  inscrutable 
paths  of  Divine  Providence.2  The  longer  elegiac  fragment 
(85)  bears  quite  the  stamp  of  Mimnermus,  and  may,  a?s  Bergk 
suggests,  have  strayed  here  (through  Stobseus)  from  the  older 
Simonides.  It  seems  a  natural  consequence  of  this  fatalism, 
which  is  curiously  at  variance  with  the  splendid  speculations 
of  Pindar  on  the  future  life  of  the  blessed,  that  there  should 
be  passages  in  Simonides  asserting  the  paramount  importance 
of  pleasure.3  His  other  rival  in  cyclic  choruses  was  Lasus 
of  Hermiohe,  the  teacher  -of  Pindar,  and  one  of  the  literary 
men  employed  at  the  court  of  Peisistratus,  of  whose  works 
but  a  single  fragment  of  three  lines  remains. 

In  concluding  our  account  of  these  manifold  fragments  of 

1  Frag.  58  : 

'Ecm  TIS  \6yos, 

TO.V  'Apfray  vaieiv  8vffa/j.l3a.TOi$  eirl  irerpats, 
vvv  St  fi.iv  6oa.v  x&P01'  a-yvbv  afiupfirfiv. 
oiiSe  wdvrcav  f}\ftf>xpois  QvurSiv  tffoirros, 
OS  ISfiiis 
lKTf)Tal  T'  e's  &Kpov  oi/5pe(as. 

Thus  (fragg.  38,  39)  : 

Ilavra  yap  jj.iav  iKVfirai  Saffir\riTa  XapvlSSiv, 
al  iifyd\ai  T'  aperal  /col  6  ir\ovros. 
IIoAXj>s  yap  &fj./j.iv  els  rb  Tfdvavai  xp^os, 
fcS/iej/  8'  apiBfjiy  iravpa  KO.KCOS  trea. 


And  again  : 

'Av9pwtrcev  o\iyov  /J.tv  Kapros,  &irpaKTOt 
alxvi  Se  iravpcp  ir6vos  a/j.(pl  tr6v<p  ' 
6  5'  &<bvKTOs  6fj.£>s  firiKpffj-arai  Bdvaros  • 
tceivov  yap  tffov  \dxov  (*epos  ol  T'  07060! 
offris  re  Kaic6s. 

8  As  we  have  in  fragg.  70  and  71.  His  rivalry  with  Pindar  and 
jealousy  of  him  are  said  to  have  been  expressed  in  the  words  of  fragg:  75, 
i£f\fyXf*  &  ffos  dlvos,  &C. 


en.  xur.  PINDAR.  211 

Greek  poetry  "between  Hesiod  and  Pindar,  it  may  be  well  to 
mention  that  English  versions  of  the  most  striking  pieces  will 
be  found  appended  to  Milman's  Agamemnon,  to  Mr.  Fitz- 
gerald's Hippolyttis,  and  in  the  chapters  which  Mr.  Symonds 
has  devoted  to  them  in  his  Greek  Poets. 

§  149.  The  Theban  Pindar  is  the  only  Greek  lyric  poet  of 
whose  works  any  considerable  or  complete  portion  has  been 
preserved,  and  it  is  fortunate  that  even  this  scanty  dole  should 
come  from  an  artist  of  the  highest  name  and  fame.  He  was 
born  at  Cynoscephalae,  close  to  Thebes,  the  son  of  Daiphantus, 
in  the  spring  of  521,  or  end  of  Ol.  64, 3.1  His  ancestors  were 
known  as  flute-players,  and  apparently  connected,  through  the 
^Egidoe,  with  Doric  blood,  as  we  may  infer  from  his  5th  Pythian 
ode.  Lasus  of  Hermione  was  his  master,2  and  indeed  Thebes 
was  generally  celebrated  at  the  time  for  flute-playing,3  though 
an  old  proverb,  which  he  twice  quotes,  spoke  of  his  people  as 
'  Boeotian  swine.'  Yet  celebrated  women,  Myrtis  and  Corinna, 
contended  against  him  and  conquered  him  in  his  early  youth 
in  poetical  contests,  and  from  the  latter  he  is  said  to  have 
received  advice  and  encouragement.  But  he  became  known 
and  esteemed  at  an  early  age,  for  we  have  one  poem  (Pyth.  x.) 
apparently  written  when  he  was  not  above  twenty.  Two 
others  (Pyth.  vi.  and  xii.),  which  date  from  before  the  Persian 
wars,  are  simpler  and  less  ambitious  than  his  later  poems, 
and  may  be  regarded  as  showing  the  earliest  phase  of  Pindar's 

1  He  was  certainly  born  at  the  very  time  of  the  1 7th  Pythian,  but 
there  is  a  grave  doubt  whether  this  may  not  correspond  with  Ol.  65,  3 
(418  B.C.),  for  though  the  Pythian  contest  seems  to  have  originated  in  the 
48th  Ol.,   the  first  contest  was  an  ay&v  xPrHJMT^rllst   for  money  prizes, 
whereas  in  Ol.  49,  3  it  was  made  trretfuiviTris,  and  from  this  date  the 
scholiasts  on  Pindar  begin  their  reckoning.      Boeckh,  who  counts  from 
Ol.   48,  4,  depends  on  Pausanias  only,   who  seems    hardly  so  good  an 
authority  as  the  excellent  scholiasts  on  Pindar.     Cf.  on  the  question  Bergk, 
FLG.    p.    9,  who    says  he  probably  lost  his  father  early,  and  that  his 
stepfather  Scopelinus  was  a  flute-player. 

2  Apollodorus  and  Agathocles  are  also  mentioned,    and   it   is  more 
than  probable  that  he  received   his  instruction  from  all  three  masters  at 
Athens. 

3  This  fashion  was  not  introduced  at  Athens  till  later,  and  is  mentioned 
in  connection  with  Alcibiades. 


212  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xm. 

style.  The  great  crisis  of  the  Persian  wars  seems  to  have 
affected  him  as  little  as  was  possible,  for  being  a  Theban  and 
opposed  to  the  patriotic  states  of  Greece,  he  could  not  offend 
his  townsmen,  and  would  not  offend  the  greater  states  with 
whom  his  sympathy  piobably  lay.  From  this  time  on  he  was 
employed  writing  occasional  poems  for  the  kings  or  citizens  of 
various  Hellenic  cities,  and  it  seems  almost  certain,  from  his 
allusions,  that  he  visited  Thessaly,  ^gina,  Argos,  and,  of 
course,  Delphi  and  Olympia.  He  probably  knew  all  the  great 
cities  ;  but  wrote  very  little  for  Athenians,  and  not  at  all  (I  be- 
lieve) for  Sparta.  He  went  to  visit  Hieron  at  Syracuse  in  Ol. 
76  or  77,  and  made  friends  in  most  of  the  Sicilian  cities,  but 
seems  to  have  been  annoyed  at  the  rivalry  and  fame  of  Simo- 
nides  and  Bacchylides.  Thus  he  may  fairly  be  called  a  national 
lyric  poet,  and  one  who  was  honoured  and  rewarded  by  all 
manner  of  Hellenes  alike.  The  end  of  his  life  was  without  in- 
cident ;  he  died  in  his  eightieth  year  at  the  Boeotian  Argos  (441 
B.C.).1  There  was  a  bronze  statue  erected  to  him  at  Athens, 
and  he  was  specially  paid  by  the  Athenians  for  one  of  his  poems. 
His  house  was  spared  by  Alexander  when  destroying  Thebes. 
He  had  the  character  of  a  pious  reserved  man,  specially  devoted 
to  the  worship  of  Apollo  among  the  gods,  and  learned  in  the 
myths  and  ceremonies  of  local  cults.  He  often  gave  proverbial 
advice  like  the  older  elegiasts,  to  whose  tone  and  style  his 
wisdom  bears  much  resemblance.  A  closer  estimate  of  his 
genius  will  occupy  us  presently. 

His  poems  comprised  Hymns,  Pseans,  Prosodia  (of  which 
two  remain  among  our  collection),  Parthenia,  Hyporchemes, 
Encomia,  Skolia,  Dithyrambs  (of  which  one  considerable  frag- 
ment remains),  Threni,2  which  seem  to  have  been  exceptionally 

1  Other  authorities  place  his  death  in  his  sixty-sixth  year  (01.  82,  i). 
That  the  obscure  Argos,  mentioned  as  the  birthplace  of  Acusilaus,  is  in- 
tended, seems  likely  from  the  other  account,  which  speaks  of  him  as  dying 
in  his  own  country.  The  various  lives  of  Pindar  from  Suidas,  the  MSS. 
and  elsewhere,  \i  ere  collected  by  Boeckh,  and  are  copied  from  him  into 
later  editions.  The  fullest  and  best  seems  to  be  that  in  a  Breslau  MS. 
(Vratisl.  A,  which  also  contains  the  best  scholia),  which  was  first  edited  by 
Schneider. 

-  Suidas  gives  seventeen  separate  titles  for  the  seventeen  books,  if  we 


CH.  xiii.         GENERAL   CHARACTERISTICS.  213 

fine,  and  the  Epinikia,  or  hymns  of  victory,  which  form  the 
chief  part  of  the  poems  we  possess.  I  do  not  believe  the 
notice  in  Suidas  that  he  wrote  tragedies.  For  the  theory  that 
there  existed  lyrical  tragedies,  intermediate  between  the  choral 
lyrics  and  the  Attic  tragedy,  though  sustained  by  Bockh  and 
O.  Miiller,  seems  devoid  of  any  better  foundation  than  that 
grammarian's  notice. 

§  150.  The  general  features  of  all  these  varied  poems  may  be 
gathered  up  under  the  following  heads.  In  the  first  place,  they 
were  non-political.  The  poet  seems  to  have  carefully  avoided 
identifying  himself  with  any  party  or  form  of  government.  His 
patrons  were  sometimes  free  aristocrats,  sometimes  hereditary 
rulers,  sometimes  tyrants ;  and  the  poet  is  willing  for  pay  to  praise 
the  good  points  in  all  of  them.  Secondly,  they  are  religious,  and 
here  a  strong  feature  in  the  man  shines  through  every  line  that 
he  wrote.  He  was  honestly  attached  to  the  national  religion, 
and  to  its  varieties  in  old  local  cults.  He  lived  a  somewhat 
sacerdotal  life,  labouring  in  honour  of  the  gods,  and  seeking  to 
spread  a  reverence  for  old  traditional  beliefs.  He,  moreover, 
shows  an  acquaintance  with  Orphic  rites  and  Pythagorean 
mysteries,  which  led  him  to  preach  the  doctrine  of  immortality, 
and  of  rewards  and  punishments  in  the  life  hereafter.1  This  strik- 
ing feature  was  not  generally  adopted  by  later  moral  teachers, 
and  shows  that  the  religious  teaching  of  Pindar  had  no  lasting 
effect  on  the  nation.  Thirdly,  the  poems  of  Pindar  are  learned, 
and  learned  in  this  particular  sense,  that  while  he  repudiates 
the  newer  philosophy,  he  lays  great  stress  on  mythical  histories, 
on  genealogies,  and  on  ritual.  He  is  indeed  more  affected  by 
the  advance  of  freethinking  than  he  imagines  ;  he  borrows  from 

omit  the  tragedies.  The  author  of  his  life  in  some  of  the  MSS.  has  only 
eight  titles,  giving  two  or  more  books  under  some  of  them.  From  the 
fact  that  Thcophrastus,  Aristoxenus,  and  other  old  authorities  quote  from 
the  skolia,  which  do  not  appear  in  the  second  list,  Bergk  (FLG.  pp. 
280,  sq.)  infers  that  there  was  an  old  Attic  collection  in  seventeen  books, 
which  Suidas'  authority  knew  ;  and  that  the  more  systematic  list,  reduced 
under  fewer  heads,  was  the  Alexandrian  recension,  probably  first  edited  by 
Aristophanes. 

1  The  most  explicit  fragment  (Opijvoi,  3)  is,  however,  not  considered 
genuine  by  recent  critics. 


214  HISTORY  OF' GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH. 

the  neologians  the  habit  of  rationalising  myths,  and  explaining 
away  immoral  acts  and  motives  in  the  gods ;  but  these  things 
are  isolated  attempts  with  him,  and  have  no  deep  effect  upon 
his  general  thinking.  Fourthly,  they  are  stately,  often  grandilo- 
quent, often  obscure,  but  never  smooth  or  witty,  never  playful 
with  success,  but  striking  from  their  splendid  diction  and 
strange  imagery.  The  extant  odes  are  exceedingly  difficult,  not 
as  the  choruses  of  ^Eschylus  are  difficult,  from  an  inability  to 
compass  sublime  thoughts  with  words,  but  from  the  involved 
constructions,  the  inverted  order,  and  the  imperfect  logic  of  his 
long  and  complicated  sentences.  Possibly  the  requirements 
of  his  elaborate  metres  may  have  further  increased  these 
difficulties.  And  yet  Eustathius  tells  us  that  these  Epinikia 
were  more  popular  than  his  other  works.1  If  this  be  so,  what 
must  the  other  poems  have  been  ?  for  the  extant  odes  teem 
with  myths,  often  local  and  obscure,  myths  of  little  interest,  and 
full  of  difficulty. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  certain  that  Pindar  has  kept  his  place  as 
the  very  highest  and  noblest  representative  of  Greek  lyric 
poetry.  He  was  honoured  and  courted  all  over  Greece- 
One  of  his  poems  was  inscribed  on  a  stele  in  the  temple 
of  Jupiter  Ammon  at  Thebes.2  The  Athenians  certainly- 
set  up  a  statue  in  his  honour,  and  are  said  (in  a  letter  of 
the  pseudo-^Eschines)  to  have  paid  him  double  the  fine  im- 
posed upon  him  by  the  Thebans  for  calling  Athens  the  main- 
stay of  Greece,3  as  well  as  for  calling  Athens  the  ghrious 
(XiTrapcu).  These  silly  stories  represent  both  Athens  and  Thebes 
as  infinitely  more  childish  than  we  know  them  to  have  been. 
As  for  calling  Athens  \nrapai,  the  epithet  is  applied  in  his 
extant  remains  to  Marathon,  Orchomenus,  Naxos,  Smyrna, 
Egypt,  and  Thebes ;  nor  do  I  think  the  story  anything  but 

1  Sia  rb  avOpuTTiKiaTepoi  flvai  Kal  6\ij6fj.vOoi,  Kal  fj.i]$f  iravv  ex€IJ/  ao'ai^a's  . 
Hard  ye  TO,  &\\a. 

2  Paus.  ix.  1 6,  I. 

3  epfur/j.a  TTJS  'EAAaSos.     I  ask  the  reader  to  observe  the  growth  of  the 
story.     Isocrates  (Antidosis,  §  1 66)  merely  says  that  for  the  sake  of  the 
one  phrase  the  Athenians  made  him  a  proxenus,  with  a  present  of  10,000 
drachmae  ;  the  later  letter  embellishes  the  matter. 


CH.  xiii.  ESTIMATE   OF  PINDAR.  215 

a  scholiast's  invention  a  propos  of  a  well-known  passage  in 
Aristophanes.1  As  for  the  Thebans  fining  a  professional  poet 
for  praising  his  patrons,  I  cannot  believe  such  an  absurdity, 
Pindar  was  quite  ready  to  praise  tyrants,  to  praise  democracies, 
to  praise  Dorians,  with  whom  he  felt  special  sympathies,  to 
praise  lonians,  and  he  did  this  professionally  and  for  pay.2  He 
was  a  good  friend  of  all  parties,  a  religious  and  respectable 
man,  and  hated  nobody  except  rival  poets,  at  whom  he  is 
always  sneering,  and  philosophers,  who  were  becoming  serious 
rivals  to  the  poets  generally,  as  teachers  of  morals  and  ex- 
poundeis  of  nascent  science.  These  two  classes  of  people 
Pindar  is  constantly  attacking ;  he  is  constantly  asserting  his 
own  powers  and  achievements  against  them  in  a  rather  un- 
dignified way — in  fact,  the  personal  allusions  in  Pindar's  poems 
are  not  at  all  pleasant  or  in  good  taste. 

But  as  my  own  judgment  of  Pindar  is  somewhat  at  variance 
with  that  of  most  classical  scholars,  I  advise  the  reader  to 
turn  to  the  texts  themselves,  and  decide  for  himself.  Apart  from 
exceptional  compositions,  like  that  above  alluded  to  as  inscribed 
on  stone,  Pindar's  works,  being  all  occasional  and  special,  soon 
passed  out  of  note,  and  were  forgotten  by  the  masses.  He  was 
not  a  patriotic  poet,  in  the  larger  Hellenic  sense.  He  wrote 
little  even  for  the  greater  Greek  states,  Sparta  and  Athens. 
Above  all,  he  appeared  at  the  close  of  the  lyric  epoch,  and  at 
the  season  when  his  contemporary  ^Eschylus  had  found  a  newei 
and  better  way  of  touching  public  sympathy.  So  Pindar  came 
to  be  '  silenced  by  the  want  of  taste  in  the  public,'  as  an  early 
comic  poet  says.  Yet  Plato  often  quotes  him  with  respect,  and 
we  may  feel  sure  that  he  at  no  time  wanted  readers. 

1  Acharn.  636. 

2  He  alludes  feelingly  to  this  lower  condition  of  his  muse,  as  compared 
with  the  older  lyric  poets,  in  Isthm.  ii.  6,  et  sqq. 

o  Mourn  -yap  ov  <j>i\OKep^s  irta  roV  i\v  ou8'  fpydns  • 
oi>5'  eirepvdvro  y\vice?a,i  /4€\tcf>66yyov  irorl  1f 
apyvpcode'iffa.i  irpofftatra  fj.a\0aK6(peavoi  aoiSat. 
vvv  5'  e<f>ir)Ti  -rb  rupyeiov  </>uA.a£<u 
prjfj.'  a\aOeLas  65a>v  ftyxiffTO,  fiauvov, 
'  a.v>]p,  Ss  cj>u 


216  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xiil. 

§  151.  But  when  the  learned  men  of  Alexandria  began  study- 
ing old  Greek  poetry,  and  analysing  and  explaining  myths,  Pindar 
was  a  welcome  and  much  prized  field  for  research.  To  such 
poets  as  Apollonius  Rhodius,  who  revelled  in  mythological 
lore,  Pindar's  accounts  of  the  local  genealogies  and  legends 
afforded  endless  material,  and  so  we  find  full  and  excellent 
scholia  upon  his  works.  We  have  ninety  quotations  from 
him  in  Plutarch,  who  specially  studied  and  prized  him  for 
patriotic  reasons,  as  he  was  the  greatest  of  Boeotian  poets,  a 
very  small  class  in  Greek  literature.  The  Romans,  who  took 
most  of  their  opinions  about  Greek  literature  from  the  Alexan- 
drians, esteemed  Pindar  very  highly,  and  Horace  speaks  con- 
stantly of  him  in  terms  of  the  most  extravagant  praise.  His 
metres  were,  of  course,  impossible  to  reproduce  for  mere  readers 
like  the  Romans,  and  Horace  saw  well  (what  some  obscurer 
Romans  failed  to  see)  that  any  attempt  at  imitating  the  rich 
and  complicated  systems  of  Pindar's  verse  would  be  ridiculous. 
He  therefore  confined  himself  to  the  simpler  forms  of  ^Eolic 
poetry,  while  he  often  borrows  a  thought  from  Pindar.  Cicero 
(like  ourselves)  read  the  choral  odes  of  the  Greeks  as  if  they 
were  prose  ;  he  could  not  realise  the  effect  of  such  verse.  In  fact, 
without  orchestic,  without  the  rylhmical  motions  of  a  chorus, 
of  which  the  figures  corresponded  to  the  strophes  of  the  odes, 
such  vast  and  intricate  structures  are  perfectly  incomprehensible. 
Anyone  who  questions  this  may  study  the  whole  subject  in  the 
learned  essays  of  Boeckh's  edition,  and  in  the  discussions  of 
Von  Leutsch,  and  of  Westphal  and  Rossbach. 

I  pass  it  by  in  this  history  as  unsuited  to  a  handbook  of 
Greek  liter, iture. 

§  152.  AS  to  the  structure  of  the  odes  of  Pindar  in  the  way 
of  argument,  a  curious  revolution  of  opinion  has  taken  place. 
The  Greek  scholiasts  seem,  from  various  hints,  to  have  thought 
that  the  many  sudden  changes,  the  many  covert  allusions, 
and  interrupted  digressions  in  the  odes  are  due  to  some  fixed 
plan  in  the  poet's  mind.  But  the  Romans  and  the  general 
public,  from  that  day  onward,  rather  looked  upon  him  as  an 
intoxicated  bard,  whose  poetic  fervour  carried  him  along 
(as  he  himself  often  pretends)  by  a  sort  of  inspiration  alien 


CH.  xiil.  PINDAR  AND  ISOCRATES,  217 

to  the  laws  of  sober  argument.  This  opinion  prevailed  till  the 
present  century,  when  the  Germans  have  revived  the  old  theory 
with  great  exaggeration,  and  have  endeavoured  to  show  that 
each  ode  is  based  on  one  central  idea,  and  that  there  is  not  a 
single  clause  without  special  reference  to,  and  a  logical  nexus 
with,  the  leading  idea  of  the  poem.  Boeckh,  Hermann,  Dissen, 
Rauchenstein,  Schneidewin,  and  others,  have  ridden  this  theory 
to  death,  and  nothing  can  be  more  laboured  and  unpoetical 
than  their  lumbering  importation  of  poetical  beauties  into 
Pindar.  Nevertheless,  their  theory  seems  so  far  true,  that 
the  circumstances  of  the  victory,  or  of  the  victor,  constantly 
suggested  to  Pindar  casual  and  transient  allusions,  of  which  the 
point  has  now  been  lost.  Thus,  much  of  his  apparent  obscurity 
or  irrelevancy  has  arisen  from  the  speciality  of  his  compositions. 
We  must  also  remember  that  the  introduction  of  local  myths, 
to  us  wearisome,  was  another  feature  specially  pleasing  to  the 
hearers  of  the  poems. 

An  ingenious  French  critic,  Havet,  has  shown  great  general 
resemblances  between  the  stately  lyrics  of  Pindar  and  the  stately 
orations  of  Isocrates.  The  main  object  of  both  was  epideictical, 
that  is,  both  encomiastic  in  subject  and  elaborate  in  form.  The 
complicated  strophes  of  the  poet  may  have  even  directly  sug- 
gested the  elaborate  periods  of  the  sophist.  It  is  also  to  be 
noted  that  neither  of  them  touches  the  heart,  though  they  as- 
tonish the  reason  and  fire  the  imagination  ;  both  were  too  arti- 
ficial for  that  deepest  of  all  functions  in  great  poetry  and  oratory. 
In  both,  again,  we  may  admire  the  consummate  skill  with 
which  they  manage  their  transitions  from  one  topic  to  another  : 
Pindar,  as  I  have  explained  already,  with  long-concealed  art ; 
Isocrates  with  ever-praised  and  admired  invention.  On  the 
whole,  we  may  say  of  Pindar  that  he  is  so  intensely  Greek  as 
to  have  lost  much  of  his  beauty  by  transference  from  his 
native  soil  and  society  ;  and,  again,  that  his  work  was  so  strictly 
special  and  occasional  that,  of  all  the  great  poets  left  to  us,  he 
suffers  most  by  being  removed  from  his  own  time  and  cir- 
cumstances. Taking  all  these  things  into  account,  and,  more- 
over, that  he  worked  for  pay,  his  lasting  and  deserved  reputa- 
tion is  perhaps  the  most  wonderful  tribute  to  Greek  genius. 

VOL.  i. — 10 


2i8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  Kill. 

§  153.  The  extant  Epinikia  of  Pindar  are  divided  into  four 
books,  determined  (without  strict  accuracy)  by  the  feasts  at  which 
the  victories  they  celebrate  were  won,  viz.  Olympian,  Pythian, 
Nemean,  and  Isthmian  odes  : l  the  three  last  Nemean,  and  2nd 
Pythian,  and  perhaps  others,  are  intended  for  other  occasions. 
None  of  these  poems  has  had  its  authenticity  questioned  ex- 
cept the  5th  Olympian,  for  metrical  reasons,  as  it  approaches 
in  structure  to  the  ^Eolic  school ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  as 
soon  as  the  critics  doubted  its  genuineness  they  immediately 
discovered  that  it  was  feeble  and  unpoetical,  and  unworthy  of 
Pindar's  greatness.  I  have  no  doubt  that  many  of  Pindar's 
poems,  were  they  taken  from  under  the  segis  of  his  name, 
would  suffer  the  same  injustice. 

The  rythms  are  divided  into  Dorian,  ^Eolian,  and  Lydian  ; 
and  the  researches  of  the  commentators  have  pointed  out  that 
the  Dorian  are  chiefly  dactyls  and  trochaic  dipodies,  giving  a 
slower  and  more  solemn  movement,  with  which  the  tenor  of 
these  odes  corresponds.  The  ^olian  and  Lydian  are  lighter 
in  character,  and  the  latter  specially  used  in  plaintive  subjects, 
Why  the  metres  should  vary  with  the  quality  of  the  scales  em- 
ployed is  a  matter  for  which  we  can  now  see  no  solid  reason, 
and,  indeed,  we  are  told  that  Dorian  melody  might  be  set,  and 
was  set  by  Pindar,  to  an  ^Eolian  accompaniment.  The  odes 
are  generally  strophic  and  antistrophic,  and  meant  for  a 
marching  or  dancing  chorus,  which  stood  still  when  epodes 
were  added.  Some  were  performed  at  Olympia  after  the 
victory;  some  at  the  victor's  home,  far  away,  and  even  a 
long  time  after  the  victory  had  been  gained. 

The  general  treatment  of  the  subject  shows  that  Pindar  was 
expected  to  make  the  rejoicing  a  public  one,  reflecting  on  the 
whole  clan  and  ancestry  of  the  victor ;  still  more  on  his  city,  and 
on  its  tutelary  heroes.  Thus  the  poet  conforms  to  the  general 
law  of  Greek  art,  which  ordained  that  it  should  be  public, 
and  not  confined  to  private  interests  or  private  appreciation.2 

1  There  were  at  this  period  innumerable  athletic  and  musical  contests 
throughout  Greece,  but  these  were  the  most  celebrated,  and  properly 
national. 

*  See  this  developed  in  my  Social  Life  in  Greece  (4th  ed.),  Chap.  xiv. 


CH.  xiii.  PLAN  OF  THE  ODES.  2i§ 

He  usually  starts  from  the  mythical  splendours  of  the  victor's 
family  or  city,  selects  such  points  in  their  history  as  have 
some  practical  lesson  bearing  upon  the  present  circumstances 
of  his  hearers,  and  insists  upon  the  importance  of  inborn 
qualities  and  high  traditions.  Such  a  line  of  argument  was,  of 
course,  peculiarly  meant  for  aristocrats.  He  then  passes  to  the 
victor's  family,  enumerates  any  prizes  gained  by  his  relations, 
and  ends  with  some  sort  of  summary  or  moral  reflection. 

This  general  sketch  is,  however,  so  much  varied,  that  it 
must  be  regarded  only  as  the  vaguest  description  of  Pindar's 
odes.  In  some,  such  as  the  4th  Pythian,  the  longest  and  most 
important  of  those  extant,  an  account  of  the  adventures  of 
the  Argonauts,  in  relation  to  Thera  and  Cyrene,  is  developed 
at  almost  epical  length ;  in  others,  such  as  the  two  odes 
addressed  to  Athenians,1  the  mythical  narrative  is  left  out. 
But  the  Athenians,  being  at  this  time  poor,  and  doubtless 
devoted  to  higher  objects  than  athletics,  come  in  for  little 
share  of  Pindar's  praise.  The  wealthy  mercantile  ^Eginetans, 
on  the  contrary,  and  the  luxurious  Sicilians  (especially  the 
tyrants)  occupy  a  very  large  place  in  his  poetry.  He  must 
have  been  a  peculiar  favourite  with  both,  for  fifteen  odes  cele- 
brate Sicilian,  and  eleven  ^Eginetan  victors.  At  Nemea  espe- 
cially, which  was  very  close  to  them,  the  ^Eginetans  contended 
with  great  success. 

§  154.  If  we  proceed  to  consider  the  extant  poems  and 
fragments  more  specially,  we  find  that  the  Olympian  odes  are. 
perhaps,  the  most  splendid,  not  only  as  celebrating  victories  in 
the  greatest  Greek  games,  but  as  being  composed  for  great 
personages,  and  probably  most  splendidly  rewarded.  The  Py- 
thian are  more  difficult,  and  replete  with  mythical  lore,  on 
account  of  Pindar's  close  connection  with  the  worship  of 
Apollo,  and  his  probable  intimacy  with  the  colleges  of  priests 
at  Delphi.  About  half  the  odes,  in  both  cases,  are  for  victors 
with  chariots  or  mule-cars  ;  both  of  which  implied  wealthy 
owners,  such  as  the  Sicilian  or  Cyrensean  tyrants.  The ,  narra- 
tive of  the  birth  of  lamus,2  the  opening  of  the  i2th;-  and  the 
1 4th  Olympian  odes,  seem  to  me  particularly  firj£. 

1  Pyth.  vii.,  New.  ii.  *  <?/.  vi.  25,  sq. 


220  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XI  1  1. 

The  last,  being  a  short  and  very  perfect  specimen  of  Pindar's 
excellence,  may  here  be  quoted.1 

Among  the  Pythian,  the  opening  of  the  first  is  splendid.2 

1  KaQurloov  vtidruv  \axot- 

ffcu  a'l  Te  vaifre  Ka\\iirci>\ov  t- 
Spav,  5  \nrapas  aolSifjiOi  ySatriAeiai 
Xdptrfs  'Opxopfvov, 
Tra\aty6v<at>  Mivvav  firiffnoiroi, 
K\VT\  eirei  ftixopai. 
<nv  yap  vfuv  ri  repirvck  Kal  ra  y\vKfa 
yiverai  irdvTa.  Ppo-rdis' 
el  ffo<p6s,  fl  Ka\6s,  fi  T 
o.vijp.    oijre  yap  6fol 
atfivav  XapiTiaf  arep 


Koipavfovn 
oijTf  Sairas'  o\Aa  irawruv 
epyav  Iv  ovpavy, 


irapa.  TlvQiov  'AirjAAcoya  Qp6vovs, 
afvaov  atfiovTi  irarpbs 

'OA.U/X7TIOJO  Ti/UCtV. 

HOTVL'  'Ay\a'ia,  ^iAijcriynoA.Te 

T'  E.v<ppoffvva,  6f£>v  KpariaTov  irafies, 

eirdicooi  vvv,  0a\ta  re  e- 

paffifJ.o\ire,  iSoiffa  r6t>$e 
KW/AOV  eir'  eiififvf?  TVX& 
Kovcpa  jSjjSwvTO  •  AvStCf)  yap 
'Affiairixov  ev  rpoiry 
tv  /J.f\erais  re  ae/Scov 
/j.6\ov  ouj/e/c'  'O\vfj.Tri6viKos  a  Mivvtia 
fftv  tKari.     Mf\avT€tx*a  vvv  Sopor 
^fpfff<p6vas  16i,  'AXO?, 
varpl  K\VTav  <j>€poL(r'  a,y- 


bv  (fays  OTI  ol  veav 
K6\iroiffi  trap1  eu56£oto  ITitras 


£,  'Atr6\\<a- 
vos  Kal  toir\OKd/j.(DV 
ffvvSiKOV  Moicrav  KTeavov 
TUS  axovei  (ifi/  pdcris,  a.y\aias  apx<£, 

:       vtiQui'Tai  6'  aoiSol  ffdpaffiv, 


CH.  xiii.  PINDAR'S  FRAGMENTS.  221 

There  is  a  very  picturesque  narrative  of  the  youth  and  adven- 
tures of  the  nymph  Gyrene  in  the  gth.1  The  Nemean  (with 
their  appendix)  and  the  Isthmian,  though  not  less  difficult, 
are,  I  think,  less  striking,  both  in  general  elevation  and  also  in 
those  peculiar  beauties  which  I  have  pointed  out  in  the  Olym- 
pian and  Pythian  odes. 

§  155.  The  fragments  left  to  us  are  very  numerous  (more 
than  300),  and  very  various  in  form  and  style.  Perhaps  foremost 
in  interest  are  the  Oprjvoi,  or  funeral  laments,  in  which  he  was 
wont  to  preach  the  purer  doctrines  either  of  the  Pythagoreans, 
or  of  the  Orphic  and  other  mysteries.  The  first  three  fragments 
transmitted  to  us  under  this  head  support  the  famous  passage 
in  the  2nd  Olympian  ode,2  in  which  this  new  hope,  and  this 
higher  aspiration,  is  set  forth  with  n6  faltering  tongue.  But  it 
is  not  a  little  remarkable  that  in  other  poems  —  the  ist  Olympian 
and  5th  Pythian  3  —  the  older,  or,  perhaps,  the  more  general 
view  of  the  state  of  the  dead  is  maintained,  and  we  have  here 
the  doctrine  of  ^Eschylus  preached,  which  is  quite  distinct  from 
the  more  modern  view.  Accordingly  the  most  explicit  fragment 
in  the  new  doctrine  (fr.  100)  is  declared  spurious  by  the  best 
recent  critics.4  From  his  Dithyrambs  we  have  a  fine  pas- 
sage, written  for  one  of  the  Dionysiac  feasts  at  Athens,  and 
preserved  by  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus.  The  metre  is  re- 
markable for  the  frequent  resolutions  of  long  syllables,  so 


a.fnffi'Xopiav  6ir6rav  ru 

a/j./3o\as  revxys  e'AeAif 

KO!  rbv  a.lxjJ-0-TO.v  Kepawbv 

ij.fva.ov  irvp6s.      eu- 

Sei  5'  avb  ffKairry  Aibs  aler6s,  w- 
Ketav  iTTfvy'  d/x^oTepw- 


apxbs  olcavuv,  Ke\aivia- 
•KIV  8'  eirt  01  ve(pf\av 
ajKvXy  Kpa-rl,  y\€<pdp(av 
aSv  K\atcrTpov,  Kctrexevas  '  6  8e  KV<S>Sff<av 
vypbv  V&TOV  alcape?,  rfcus 
piiraiffi  Karaff^^evos. 

1  vv.  14,  ?q.  2  vv.  56,  sq.  *  vv.  8$,  sq. 

4  Zeller,  Phil,  der  Griechen,  i.  p.  56,  note. 


222  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xin. 

giving  a  peculiarly  rapid  effect.  The  same  critic  has  pre- 
served another  poem  of  similar  character,  a  hyporcheme  com- 
posed for  the  Thebans,  which  treats  of  a  recent  eclipse  of  the 
sun  (probably  April  30,  463  B.C.),  and  which  in  diction  and 
style  reminds  us  strongly  of  some  of  the  choral  odes  in  the 
tragedies,  especially  those  of  Sophocles.1 

I  will  close  these  details  with  a  word  about  Pindar's  skolia. 
His  ponderous  and  splendid  style  was  not  suited  to  light  or 
frivolous  subjects,  and  we  can  note,  even  in  the  scanty  remains, 
a  great  contrast  to  the  more  favourite  skolia  of  other  poets.  In 
fact,  Pindar's  lighter  effusions  seem  to  differ  only  in  subject, 
not  in  style,  from  his  solemn  odes  ;  and  the  prominent  subject 
in  the  skolia  seems  to  have  been  love.  The  first  was  composed 
for  a  chorus  of  100  crat/fac,  whom  the  Corinthian  Xenophon 
offered  to  bring  to  the  temple  of  Aphrodite,  to  obtain  the 
goddess'  favour  for  an  Olympic  competition.  The  poet  ex- 
cuses the  trade  of  these  women  on  the  ground  of  necessity, 
but  in  another  fragment  apologises  for  appearing  at  Corinth  in 
connection  with  such  company.  This  poem,  which  was  com- 
posed in  his  best  style,  shows  how  completely  professional  his 

'AeXfou,  rl  iroXvffKOv'  tufiffao,  Qoiav  /JMT€p 


Hffrpov  vireprarof  tv  ajuepa  K 

HQijKas  a.p.&'xavov  Iff'xyv  irporaivl 

avSpdffi  Kal  ffo<f>ias  6$6v,  tiriaKOTOV 

arpairbv  fffffvfJ.fva 

2\avveiv  TI  vedi-rtpov  t)  irdpos. 

aAAa  <re  irpbs  Aibj  tirirovs  re  Boas  'tKfTfvu, 

curfjfj.ov''  fls  olp.ov  Tivh  rpdiroio  0^/3ais, 

3>  irorvia,  vdyKOivov  repay. 

vo\efj.ov  5'  et  <7u,ua  (pepfis  TIV&S,  t)  ffrdffiv 

oi>\ofj.ft>av, 
%  vayfrbv  KapTtov  <t>8t<riv,  f)  vuprrov  <rQevos 

vireptparov, 

t)  ir&vrov  Kevfoxrtv  ava  irtSov 
v6Tiov  Bepos, 


et  yatav  KaTa/cXuerojcra  G^ifffis 
avSpiav  Vfov  t|  op%"s  ytvos, 
o\o(pvpo/j.ai  ovStv  3  rt  trdvruv  u 


CH.  xin.  MSS.   AND  EDITIONS.  223 

work  was,  and  how  little  his  moral  saws  need  be  taken  as  evi- 
dences of  a  lofty  character.  The  second  skolion  in  the  modern 
collections  is  addressed  to  Theoxenus  of  Tenedos,  a  boy  whom 
the  poet  loved  passionately  in  his  old  age.  Indeed,  this  Greek 
form  of  the  passion  is  prominent  enough  all  through  his  works, 
as  we  should  expect  from  a  Theban  poet ;  and  we  find  it  in 
other  scraps  of  his  skolia. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  his  philosophy.  If  in  religion  he 
shows  great  advance  beyond  earlier  lyric  and  elegiac  poets, 
this  is  probably  to  be  attributed  to  the  influences  of  the 
Delphic  priesthood.  In  politics  his  opinions  are  not  valuable, 
because  they  were  accommodated  to  the  views  of  his  patrons. 
In  morals  he  expresses  the  average  feelings  of  the  Greeks  of 
his  day  ;  while  he  is  sometimes  raised  above  them  by  his  lofty 
conceptions  of  the  unity  and  power  of  God,  he  often  preaches 
the  suspicion,  the  jealousy,  and  the  selfishness  which  we  find  in 
Theognis.  The  resignation  which  he  constantly  inculcates  is 
based  on  the  same  gentle  fatalism  which  meets  us  in  the  con- 
solations of  Simonides. 

§  156.  Bibliographical.  I  turn  to  the  MSS.,  editions,  and 
translations  of  note.  We  know  that  the  greatest  of  the  Alexan- 
drians expended  critical  care  on  Pindar;  and  the  notes  of 
Zenodotus  and  Aristarchus,  with  others,  were  put  together  by 
the  indefatigable  Didymus  into  a  commentary,  from  which  our 
best  sets  of  scholia  are  excerpts.  Other  Byzantine  scholars 
added  inferior  work.  The  commentary  of  Eustathius  is  lost  all 
but  the  preface. 

As  to  our  extant  MSS.,  Tycho  Mommsen  has  established 
several  families,  and  has  collated  a  vast  number  of  copies 
under  each.  The  oldest  and  best  are  the  Ambrosian  C,  122, 
of  the  1 2th  cent,  (called  by  him  A) ;  the  MS.  of  Ursini  in  the 
Vatican  (No.  1312),  called  B  ;  and  a  Medicean  of  the  thir- 
teenth century — all  furnished  with  scholia.  These  older  MSS. 
are  far  better  than  the  Thomani  or  Moschopulei.  The  earli- 
est edition  was  the  Aldine  of  1513,  followed  by  Calergi's 
(Rome)  in  1515;  then  Stephanus  (1560  and  1599);  Erasmus 
Schmid  (1616) ;  an  Oxford  edition  by  West  and  Walsted  in  1697. 
Modern  studies  began  with  Heyne's  great  book  (1778,  and 


224  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xin. 

reprinted);  then  A.  Boeckh's  monumental  work  (1811-22), 
supplemented  by  G.  Hermann's  notes,  and  Dissen  and 
Schneidewin's  elaborate  commentary.  The  latest  texts  in 
Germany  are  Bergk's  (in  his  Lyrici),  and  the  exhaustive 
critical  edition  of  Tycho  Mommsen  (Berlin,  1864),  who  first 
ordered  and  classified  the  legion  of  MSS.  In  England  we 
have  three  good  recent  editions  :  Donaldson's  (1841),  a  careful 
and  scholarly  work  ;  Cookesley's  (Eton,  1852) ;  and  the  newest 
by  Mr.  C.  A.  M.  Fennell  (Cambridge  University  Series,  1879), 
of  which  the  Olympian  and  Pythian  odes  have  just  appeared. 
These,  together  with  H.  Bindseil's  elaborate  Concordance  (Ber- 
lin, 1875),  are  quite  adequate  for  the  study  of  this  difficult 
poet. 

The  translations  of  Pindar  form  a  whole  library,  and  are 
remarkable  for  having  so  many  important  prose  versions 
among  them.  The  earliest,  in  Latin  verses,  by  Sudorius  (in 
1575),  was  followed  in  Germany  by  Damm  (prose),  1771 ;  then 
by  Bothe,  Thiersch,  Hartung,  Tycho  Mommsen,  W.  Hum- 
boldt,  and  Donner,  all  weighty  names.  The  Italians  had  a 
full  text  and  Italian  verse  translation  with  notes,  by  G.  Gautier, 
in  four  vols.,  a  handsome  work  (Rome,  1762-8)  ;  and  since, 
Borghi  (1824).  Our  own  Cowley,  approaching  the  study  of 
Pindar  about  1650,  speaks  very  severely  of  the  extant  transla- 
tions, and,  indeed,  of  the  very  attempt  to  render  him  into 
literal  prose.  '  If  a  man,'  says  he,  '  would  undertake  to 
translate  Pindar  word  for  word,  it  would  be  thought  that 
one  madman  had  translated  another,  as  may  appear  when  he 
that  understands  not  the  original  reads  the  verbal  translations 
of  him  into  Latin  prose,  than  which  nothing  seems  more 
raving ;  and  sure  rhyme,  without  the  addition  of  wit  and 
the  spirit  of  poetry,  would  but  make  it  ten  times  more  dis- 
tracted.' He  proceeds  to  give  specimens  of  loose  versions  of  two 
'  Pindarique  odes '  l — so  loose  that  all  the  Pindar  vanishes,  and 
only  Cowley  remains — the  English  Pindar,  Virgil,  and  Horace, 
as  he  is  called  on  his  fulsome  tombstone.  Gilbert  West  made 
aversion  in  1749;  there  was  an  Oxford  prose  translation  in 
1824  ;  then  very  beautiful  paraphrases  by  Bishop  Heber  in 

1  OL  ii.  and  New.  i. 


CH.XIII.  BACCHYLIDES.  225 

1840,  and  a  highly  praised  version  of  A.  Moore  (with  Turner's 
prose,  Bohn,  1852).  We  have  also  Wheelwright  (1830),  Gary 
(1833),  Tremenheere  (1866),  with  a  good  preface,  and  omitting 
the  mythical  narratives,  except  in  summary ;  also  T.  C.  Baring 
(1875),  int°  irregular  rhymed  verse  ;  Frank  D.  Morice  (1876, 
Ol.  and  Pyth.  only) ;  and  an  anonymous  version  (Winchester, 
1876).  Lastly,  there  are  the  new  prose  versions  by  Mr.  Paley 
and  Mr.  Ernest  Myers  (1874),  the  latter  of  peculiar  merit. 
Almost  all  these  translations  are  enriched  with  dissertations 
on  Pindar's  genius,  on  the  Olympic  games,  and  on  the  diffi- 
culties of  translating  choral  lyric  odes  into  English.  Their 
laudations  of  Pindar  are,  I  think,  indiscriminate ;  but  I  am 
bound  to  say  that  they  show  a  general  agreement  against  the 
view  I  have  taken  of  the  poet's  position  in  his  age. 

§  1 5  7.  The  other  rival  of  Pindar's  mature  life  was  the  nephew 
of  Simonides,  BACCHYLIDES  of  Keos,  son  of  Meidon,  01 
Meidylus.  He  lived  with  his  uncle  at  the  court  of  Hiero,  and 
flourished  about  the  7oth  to  8oth  Olympiads.  The  scholiasts 
on  Pindar  tell  us  constantly1  of  the  jealousy  of  Pindar,  and 
even  of  the  preference  shown  to  Bacchylides.  His  art,  and 
the  subjects  he  treated,  seem  quite  similar  to  those  of  Simonides 
and  Pindar ;  but  it  has  been  the  modern  fashion,  following  the 
judgment  of  Longinus,  and  of  Longinus  only,  to  describe  him 
as  a  man  of  no  genius,  who  by  careful  study  and  great  correctness 
attained  a  moderate  position,  and  never  rose  to  real  fame. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  not  equal  to  either  of  his 
great  contemporaries,  but  the  extant  fragments  show  that  later 
criticism  has  underrated  the  man.  Had  they  been  attributed 
to  the  greater  poets,  many  of  the  critics  who  now  barely 
condescend  to  approve  of  them  would  have  been  full  of  en- 
thusiasm about  them.  It  should  be  noticed  particularly  that 
the  ideas  developed  in  the  few  extant  fragments  seem  copied 
by  the  greatest  writers  of  the  next  generation.  Thus  the  second 
and  third 

©va/rolffi  /ti^  <t>vvai 


oA^ios  8'  ovSels  Pporcav  iravra. 

1  On  OL  ii.  154,  Pyth.  ii.  97,  161-7,  A'Jw*.  iii.  143. 
IO* 


226  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XIII. 

Tlavpoiffi  8e  Qvariav  rbv  aireura  -)(j>6vov 


irpdffffovras  et>  Kaipf  •jro\wKp6ra(pov 
yr/pas  iHVfTcrOai,  vplv  tyKvpcrat  Snot. 

contain  the  substance  and  almost  the  words  of  the  famous 
chorus  in  Sophocles'  second  CEdipus,  and  the  no  less  splendid 
prose  paraphrase  in  Herodotus.1  The  beautiful  ptzdn  on 
peace  has  more  than  one  parallel  in  the  chpruses  of  Euri- 
pides :  — 

Ti'/cret  8e  re  Qvaroiaiv  'Elpdva  /le-yoAa 
irKovrov  leal  fJL(\iy\d>ffff(i>v  aotSap  HvBea, 
SatSaAeW  T'  tirl  POI/J.UIV  Oeotffiv  tddfffQai 


vtois  av\Siv  re  Kol  KWUWV  (j.(\ew. 
erois  irApwa£iv  al6at> 
iipa.'xya.v  Iffrol  irt  \OVTCU' 

«7Xeo  re  Ao7xWT"  C'V€(*  T'  ttA"^1^60  Sa/ivaroi  evp&s  ' 
Xa\Kfai>  8'  OVK  tffri  aakxlyytav  KTVVOS  • 
ou8«  eruXaTaj  ft.f\l<pp<av  vvvos  dirb  y\f<f>dpwt>, 
a.fj.bv  &s  6d\irfi  Ktap. 
<rvfi.Teoffi(av  8'  epariav  QpiQovr'1  oyviol  iraiSiKol  <?'  vfivoi 


It  is  surprising  that  great  German  critics  should  depreciate  this 
beautiful  fragment,  and  call  it  a  mere  correct  school-exercise  ; 
but  as  I  have  quoted  it  in  full,  the  reader  may  judge  the  matter 
for  himself.  A  good  many  lines  of  erotic  skolia  are  also  extant, 
which  appear  to  approach  much  nearer  to  the  ^Eolic  metres 
and  style  than  the  skolia  of  Pindar.  On  the  whole,  then,  Bac- 
chylides  seems  hardly  to  have  received  justice,  if  the  extant 
pieces  are  not  far  above  his  average  performance. 

Little  is  known  of  either  Myrtis  or  Corinna,  the  Boeotian 
rivals  of  Pindar.  Myrtis  seems  to  have  composed  lyric  love 
stories,  like  the  Calyce  of  Stesichprus,  and  Corinna  is  chiefly 
cited  by  grammarians  for  her  local  dialect,  of  which  some  forty 
specimens  are  given.  Two  Dorian  poetesses,  Telesilla  of 
Argos,  and  Praxilla  of  Sicyon,  are  cited  as  of  the  same  age, 
and  of  the  same  character,  the  few  lines  we  have  of  Praxilla 
indicating  a  somewhat  erotic  tone. 

1  O.  C.  v,  121  1,  Herod,  vii.  46. 


CH.  xni.  TIMOCREON.  227 

§  158.  A  more  distinct  and  interesting  personality  is  that 
of  TIMOCREON  the  Rhodian.  He  was  an  athlete  of  renown, 
and  an  aristocrat  of  lalysus,  who  was  banished  through  sus- 
picion of  medising;  he  himself  asserts  that  he  bribed  The- 
mistocles  to  obtain  his  recall,  and  he  reviles  him  for  his 
refusal  to  interfere.  He  also  quarrelled  with  Simonides,  an.d 
the  two  poets  gave  vent  to  their  anger  in  verses,  of  which 
those  of  Timocreon  were  the  stronger,  those  of  Simonides  per- 
haps the  keener.  What  is  really  interesting  in  Timocreon  is 
his  curious  position  as  an  aristocratic  poet  born  out  of  due 
time.  He  wrote  not  for  pay,  but  through  passion,  like  Archi- 
lochus,  like  Alcseus,  and  the  other  stormy-lived  bards  of  an 
earlier  generation.  Nevertheless,  so  firmly  had  the  choral 
lyric  form  taken  hold  of  the  Greek  mind,  that  this  man's 
lampoons  and  satires  are  produced  in  the  elaborate  strophes 
of  the  Dorian  hymns,  and  have  puzzled  the  critics  to  assign 
them  a  title,  which  BernhaMy  has  made  that  of  antistrophic 
skolion.  This  misfortune  of  a  false  form  prevented  Timocreon 
from  pouring  out  his  passion  with  the  simple  vigour  of  Archi- 
lochus  ;  for  the  choral  forms  are  not  lyric  in  the  modern 
sense,  but  epical  and  didactic,  while  real  passion  will  not  deck 
itself  with  such  pomp  and  circumstance.  We  can  imagine,  too, 
how  the  paid  poets  of  the  early  fifth  century  combined  against 
this  turbulent  aristocrat,  whose  life  was  spent  in  war  and  travel, 
and  who  doubtless  despised  their  mercenary  muse.  The  ancient 
authorities  concerning  him  are  collected  concisely  by  Bernhardy;  ' 
the  chief  of  them  is  Plutarch,  who  quotes  a  famous  passage.2 

1  ii.  p.  744, 

2  Themist.  21  :  *AAA'  ei  rvye  Tlavffaviav  4)  Kal  rvye  s,dv8iiriroi>  cuWe;s 

j)  rvye  AeuTux^ov,  iy&  5'  'ApicrreiSat  eircuvect, 

&v5pj  Ifpaf  air'  'Adavav  ^A0«yuei 

Kyffrov  «f',  firfl  0e;iu<rTo;cAf;'  tfxdapf  Aartia, 

tyevffrav,  &8iKoi/,  irpoSiiav,  t>s  TifioKpfOVTK 

^vov  f6vr\  apyvpiou    OKvfia.XiK'roiffi  ireurOels  ov  Karayev 

es  vdrpav  'Id\vffov, 

\a^uv  5e  tp'C  apyvplov  TaAavr'  efia  ir\€o>v  els  o\(0pov, 

TOVS  u.tv  Kardycav  aS'iKcas,  TOVS  8'  fKSid'Ktav,  TOVS  Se  Kaivtav, 


fuxpa  Kpea  irapexeav,  ol  8'  tfffdiov, 
eftxovro  juJ;    Sipav  QtfiiffTOK\evs  yevfffOai. 


228  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xm. 

The  scholiast  on  Aristophanes  l  cites  also  a  well-known  skolion 
on  Wealth,  because  it  is  parodied  in  the  text  with  reference 
to  a  decree  of  Pericles. 

§  159.  The  student  who  examines  Bergk's  Lyric  Fragments 
will  perhaps  wonder  at  the  numerous  poets  in  his  list  which  are 
not  mentioned  in  this  chapter.  It  is  due  to  him,  and  to  myself, 
that  I  should  explain  that,  in  the  first  place,  several  of  them, 
such  as  Aristotle,  will  be  considered  again  under  that  species 
of  literature  which  they  cultivated  with  most  success.  Others 
are  post-classical ;  and  this  objection  is  brought  by  the  critics 
against  many  fragments  attributed  by  Athenseus  and  Stobasus  to 
classic  names.  Many  others  are  known  to  us  merely  from  a 
single  citation,  and  neither  their  age  nor  their  character  can 
now  be  determined.  Thus  I  have  felt  justified  in  avoiding 
here  another  list  of  barren  names,  such  as  we  find  at  the  close 
of  the  history  of  both  epic  and  tragic  poetry.  Yet  there  are  a 
few  who  are  still  interesting,  and  concerning  whom  I  should 
gladly  have  said  something  in  a  more  elaborate  work.  The 
fragments  worth  reading  are  those  of  Euenus,  above  mentioned; 
of  the  philosopher  Crates  ;  of  Herodas,  a  writer  of  Mimiambics 
in  the  style  of  Hipponax ;  of  Praxilla,  a  poetess  who  composed 
social  lyrics ;  of  Ariphron — a  fine  Ode  to  Health ;  of  Timo- 
theus,  a  celebrated  musical  composer  at  the  end  of  the  classical 
period ;  of  Philoxenus,  whose  culinary  ode,  of  which  long 
fragments  are  extant,  was  in  Aristotle's  day  very  popular;  and 
of  Telestes.  There  are  also  many  fine  anonymous  fragments, 
which  seem  to  come  from  the  greatest  poets,  such  as  Stesi- 
chorus  or  Pindar,  and  a  few  piquant  popular  songs,  in  addition 
to  those  already  mentioned  in  this  book.  They  indicate  to  us 
how  small  a  fraction  of  Greek  lyric  poetry  has  survived,  and 
how  many  great  artists  yet  await  a  literary  resurrection  from 
the  research  of  some  fortunate  explorer. 

With  the  angry  Timocreon  I  close  the  history  of  Greek  lyric 
poetry,  for  though  Pratinas  and  others  were  the  contem- 
poraries of  the  latter  mentioned,  they  are  closely  connected 
with  the  dithyramb,  and  will  be  better  discussed  in  the  intro- 

1  Acharn.  532  (frag.  8). 


CH.  xnr.  RISE   OF  PROSE    WRITING.  229 

duction  to  tragic  than  at  the  close  of  lyric  poetry.  The  student 
should  be  reminded  that  in  studying  Greek  Literature  chrono- 
logically, he  must  now  turn,  before  approaching  the  Attic 
Drama,  to  the  history  of  prose  writing,  which  was  growing 
silently,  and  almost  secretly,  all  through  the  sixth  century  B.C., 
though  its  bloom  did  not  come  till  after  the  completion  of 
Greek  poetry  by  ^schylus  and  Sophocles.  He  will  find  this 
side  of  the  subject  treated  in  the  opening  chapters  of  my  Second 
Volume. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

DRAMATIC  TENDENCIES  IN  THE  SIXTH  CENTURY.  THE  RISE 
OF  TRAGEDY  AND  SATYRIC  DRAMA.  THE  EXTERNAL  AP- 
PLIANCES OF  GREEK  PLAYS. 

§  1 60.  THE  first  beginnings  of  the  tragedy  are  enveloped  in 
mist.  They  did  not  become  interesting  till  the  details  had  been 
forgotten,  and  we  can  now  only  patch  together  scanty  shreds  of 
late  tradition  on  this  subject  A  few  facts,  however,  are  indis- 
putable. In  the  first  place,  it  is  certain  that  tragedy  arose  from 
the  choruses  which  danced  and  recited  in  honour  of  Dionysus. 
These  dithyrambs,  as  they  Avere  called,  were  the  last  form  of 
lyric  poetry  to  assume  a  literary  chape,  and  seem  to  have  been 
especially  cultivated  by  the  Dorians  and  Achseans  near  the 
isthmus.  I  have  already  mentioned  Arion  and  Epigenes  in 
connection  with  them  (above,  p.  200),  but  both  of  these  appear 
to  represent  only  one  side  of  the  dithyramb — its  serious  side. 
This  phase  was  probably  suggested  by,  or  connected  with, 
the  solemn  mysteries  which  identified  Dionysus  with  Zagreus, 
with  the  decay  and  death  of  nature  as  a  condition  of  its  resur- 
rection. The  worship  of  this  gloomy  and  mysterious  Dionysus 
was  certainly  in  the  mysteries  performed  by  some  sort  of  cere- 
mony imitating  his  sufferings  and  death,  and  this  must  have 
suggested  in  the  dithyramb  that  serious  vein  which  enabled 
Epigenes  to  substitute  the  sorrows  of  Adrastus  for  those  of  the 
god.  This  respectable  and  literary  form  of  dithyramb  was  early 
transplanted  to  Athens,  where,  under  the  hands  of  Lasus,  it 
assumed  so  elaborate  a  mimetic  character,  by  means  of  the 
higher  development  of  music  and  dancing,  that  (like  our 
ballet)  it  almost  became  a  drama,  and  has  made  many  scholars 


CH.  xiv.  PRATINAS.  231 

imagine  the  existence  of  a  lyrical  drama,  alongside  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  real  tragedy.  All  this  development  of  the 
dithyramb  seems  to  have'  been  distinctly  Dorian,  as  might  be 
expected  from  its  choral  lyric  character. 

§  1  6  1.  There  was  also  a  rustic  and  jovial  dithyramb  common 
among  the  lower  classes  in  the  same  districts,  where  the  choruses 
imitated  the  sports  and  manners  of  satyrs  in  attendance  on  the 
god,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  these  came  more  into 
fashion  according  as  the  serious  dithyramb  wandered  from  its 
original  purpose,  and  was  even  applied  to  celebrate  other 
personages  than  the  god  Dionysus.  The  proverb  o\>liv  irpos 
TOV  Atovuffov  ('there  is  no  Dionysus  in  it')  preserves  the  objec- 
tions of  old-fashioned  people  to  such  innovations,  and  these 
objections  were  permanently  respected  by  the  essentially  satyric 
dithyramb,  which  was  brought  to  Athens  by  PRATINAS  l  of  Phlius, 
who  with  Chcerilus  and  other  poets  put  it  on  the  stage  as  a 
proper  completion,  and  necessary  adjunct  to  the  nascent 
tragedy.  This  Pratinas  was  a  brilliant  poet,  to  judge  from  a 
fragment  preserved  by  Athenaeus,  in  which  he  complains  of  the 
increasing  prominence  of  the  instrumental  accompaniments  to 
the  dithyrambs,  possibly  those  of  Lasus,  and  vindicates  for  his 
chorus  their  proper  functions.2  He  is  called  the  son  of 

1  According  to  Fick  (Grieck.  Personentiamen,  p.  xxxv),  this  name, 
which  is  derived  from  the  Doric  form  for  irpuros,  and  is  a  collateral  form 
for  irpdiTivos  (—irpvTiovos),  should  be  pronounced  UpaTTvas.  I  cannot  find 
any  direct  authority  in  the  classics  for  this  quantity. 

Ti's  <3  dopvftos  SSe  ;  ri  rdSe  TO.  xopei5,uaTa  ; 

T(S  vfipis  e/j.o\ev  eirl  Aioj'utriaSa  •tro\vitdTa.ya.  9vfj.e\av  ; 

f/jibs  ffjAs  6  Bp6fj.ios  '  f/J.e  Sel  /ceAaSeTj/,  e/j.e  Se?  irarayeiv 

av'  opea  avp-evov  /nera  Ua'idScav 

old  re  KVKVOV  &JOVTO.  iroiKi\6irrepov  fj.e\os. 

T&V  aoiSaj/  Ka.TfffTa.ffe  Tiiepls  fiaffi\tia.v  '  6  8'  av\bs 

SffTfpov  %opfVfTca  •  Ka.1  •ya.p  fffff  uirrjperas. 

Kca/aca  (J.6VOV  6vpa/j.dxois  re  Trvy/J.a)(_iaiffi  vewv  fie' 


vote,  traif  Tbv  $pvy'  ao 
irotKiXov  Trpoaxeovra.  • 


\a\opapv6ira  iraoay.f\oovd/i.o&dTat'  ff 


232  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xiv. 

Pyrrhonides,  and  said  to  have  composed  thirty-two  satyric 
dramas  with  fifty  tragedies;  he  contested  in  Ol.  70  with 
^Eschylus  and  Chcerilus,  but  was  only  once  successful  in  carry- 
ing off  the  first  prize.  His  son  Aristias  was  equally  celebrated 
as  a  satyric  dramatist,  and  was  second  when  ^schylus  won 
with  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  but  apparently  with  a  satyric 
drama  of  his  father's.  Chcerilus  was  active  from  524  to  468  B.C. 
(if  we  believe  Suidas),  and  is  celebrated  as  one  of  the  old  trage- 
dians, but  still  more  for  his  satyric  drama,  which  appears  from 
the  proverb,  '  When  Chcerilus  was  king  among  the  Satyrs.' 

§  162.  In  fact  all  the  early  dramatists,  not  excluding 
^Eschylus,  laid  great  stress  upon  this  peculiar  style,  which, 
however,  passed  out  of  fashion  in  the  next  century,  especially 
when  Euripides  had  devised  the  expedient  of  supplying  its 
place  with  a  melodrama,  or  tragedy  with  comic  elements,  like 
the  A  Ices  t  is.  The  remarkable  point  about  the  satyric  drama  is 
its  marked  separation  from  comedy,  and  its  close  attachment  to 
tragedy.  It  is  called  '  sportive  tragedy,'  and  was  never  com- 
posed by  comic  poets.  We  have  only  one  extant  specimen  — 
the  Cyclops  of  Euripides  —  in  which  we  observe  that  the  pro- 
tagonist or  hero  (Odysseus)  is  not  the  least  ridiculed  or  lowered 
in  position  ;  in  fact,  we  have  no  play  in  which  he  appears  so 
respectable,  but  he  is  accompanied  by  a  chorus  of  satyrs  whose 
odes  show  no  small  traces  of  the  old  phallic  songs  in  the 
rural  dithyramb.  The  general  character  of  the  subjects  left  us  in 
the  titles  of  the  satyric  plays,  and  of  the  fragments  (many  of 
which,  among  the  fragments  of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles,  strike 
us  by  their  open  coarseness),  lead  us  to  compare  the  satyric 
drama  of  the  Greeks  to  that  peculiar  species  of  drama  among  us 
which  is  comic,  though  quite  distinct  from  comedy,  and  which 
treats  some  familiar  legend  or  fairy  tale  with  grotesque  and 
conventional  accessories.  The  reader  will  already  have  guessed 
that  I  refer  to  the  pantomimes  of  the  English  stage,  in  which 
the  earlier  part  is  some  adaptation  of  a  well-known  fairy  tale, 

viral  Tpvir&vtf  Sextos  i 
fy  ISov  a5e  croi  8e|ici 


coue  rat>  e[j.a.v 


CH.  xiv.  THESP1S.  233 

such  as  Sinbad  or  Blue  Beard,  in  which  there  are  horrible  and 
tragic  adventures,  and  generally  a  respectable  chief  character, 
coupled  with  grotesque  accessories  and  conventional  dancing. 
This  curious  parallel  will  illustrate  to  the  English  reader  many 
of  the  difficulties  in  the  position  of  the  satyric  drama  at  Athens. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  old  dithyrambs  were  spoken 
of  as  introductions  to  the  more  solemn  cyclic  choirs,  whereas 
their  dramatic  outcome  was  always  played  after  the  tragedies. 
The  critics  are  ready  with  sesthetical  reasons  for  this,  but  we 
are  left  at  a  loss  for  historical  facts.  Though  a  flavour  of 
humour  was  not  foreign  to  the  tragedy  of  Euripides,  nor  even 
to  that  of  ^Eschylus,  there  seems  no  doubt  that  the  early  Greek 
drama  did  not  afford  scope  for  the  violent  contrasts  so  striking 
in  Shakespeare,  and  preferred  to  relegate  the  low  and  the 
grotesque  into  a  separate  play  associated  with  solemn  tragedy. 
The  extant  Cyclops  is  a  sort  of  farce  without  much  extrava- 
gance, observing  in  its  hero  the  decorum  suited  to  a  tragic 
writer,  and  giving  to  Silenus  and  to  his  attendant  satyrs  an 
evidently  conventional  character  of  laziness,  drunkenness  and 
license.  The  real  contest  was  in  that  day  among  the  tragedies, 
and  this  afterpiece  was  probably  given  while  the  public  was 
discussing  the  previous  plays.  In  later  days  the  satyric  drama 
seems  to  have  been  abandoned,  and  therefore  all  the  other 
extant  specimens  were  lost.  It  is  a  misfortune  that  we  do  not 
possess  at  least  one  from  the  hands  of  an  acknowledged 
master  in  this  department,  or  from  the  epoch  when  it  had  real 
importance.  But  the  Cyclops  explains  to  us  the  structure  and 
style  of  these  pieces.  These  few  words  may  suffice  to  dispose 
of  this  byway  of  the  Greek  drama.  I  now  return  to  the  more 
important  history  of  serious  tragedy. 

§  163.  All  our  authorities  are  agreed  that  despite  the  various 
approaches  and  hints  at  tragedy  before  Thespis — the  Pelopon- 
nesians  counted  sixteen  poets  of  Dorian  tragedy  before  him — 
he  was  really  the  originator  of  that  sort  of  poetry.  We  only 
know  that  he  belonged  to  the  deme  or  village  of  Icaria,  on  the 
borders  of  the  Megarid,  and  doubtless  in  constant  intercourse 
with  these  people,  among  whom  the  worship  of  Dionysus 
was  said  to  be  particularly  at  home.  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the 


234  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE,    cti.  xiv. 

neighbouring  town  of  Eleusis,  to  which  all  Icarians  must  have 
constantly  come,  was  apparently  the  chief  place  for  the  deeper 
worship  of  Dionysus  Zagreus,  and  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
suppose  that  this  double  experience  of  the  local  choruses  to 
Dionysus  at  Icaria,  and  the  solemn  mimic  rites  of  the  mys- 
teries, were  the  determining  features  of  his  great  discovery. 

For  in  what  did  this  discovery  consist  ?  As  was  well  known, 
tragic  elements  were  present  in  Homer,  and  the  characteristic 
dialogues  in  the  old  epics  were  far  more  dramatic  than  the 
early  tragedies  not  only  of  Thespis,  but  of  ^Eschylus.  The 
misfortunes  of  heroes  had  already  been  sung  by  the  dithyrambic 
choruses  at  Sicyon,  and  a  mimetic  character  given  to  such  per- 
formances by  the  expressive  gestures  of  the  choirs  of  Lasus. 
We  have  no  reason  to  think  that  Thespis  added  a  dialogue  to 
the  cyclic  choruses,  or  lyrical  element  from  which  he  started. 
From  what  is  told  us  we  merely  infer  that  he  to  some  extent 
separated  the  leader  of  the  chorus  from  the  rest,  and  made  him 
introduce  and  interrupt  the  choral  parts  with  some  sort  of  epic 
recitation.  What  metre  he  used  for  this  recitation  we  know 
not,  nor  the  subjects  he  treated,  for  the  titles  transmitted  by 
Suidas  are  of  forgeries  by  Heracleides  Ponticus,  and  Thespis 
probably  left  nothing  written.  Yet  he  certainly  aimed  at  some 
illusion,  by  which  he  escaped  from  himself,  and  entered  into 
the  feelings  of  another  person,  when  he  undertook,  as  we  are 
told,  to  perform  the  part  of  leader  to  his  chorus.  For  he  dis- 
guised himself,  and  so  far  imitated  reality  that  Solon  is  said  (by 
Plutarch)  to  have  been  greatly  offended  at  the  performance,  and 
to  have  indignantly  denounced  the  deliberate  lying  implied  in  his 
acting.  Of  course  we  must  cast  aside  the  nonsense,  talked  by 
Horace,  of  his  being  a  strolling  player,  going  about  in  a  cart  to 
fairs  and  markets.  Not  only  did  Horace  confuse  the  origins 
of  tragedy  and  of  comedy,  but  the  poetical  requirements  of 
the  Athenian  public  trained  by  the  enlightened  policies  of 
Solon  and  Peisistratus.  In  the  Athens  where  Lasus,  and 
Simonides,  and  Anacreon,  and  presently  Pindar,  found  favour, 
no  rude  village  song  could  find  favour  ;  nay,  we  rather  see  an 
over-artificial  taste  prevailing  in  the  lyric  poetry  of  that  date. 

Thespis  composed  his  dramas  from  about  Ol.  61  for  city 


CH.  xiv.     PHRYNICHUS   THE  TRAGIC  POET.  235 

feasts  and  for  an  educated  audience.  The  mere  setting  up  of  a 
stage,  and  donning  of  a  mask,  could  not  in  such  an  atmosphere 
give  to  any  poet  the  title  of  a  great  originator.  Though  the 
story  just  cited  from  Plutarch  contradicts  the  inference,  we 
would  fain  believe  that  an  acquaintance  with  the  mysteries,  and 
deeper  theology  of  the  day,  suggested  to  Thespis  the  represen- 
tation of  human  sorrow  for  a  moral  purpose.  There  seems  no 
trace  of  this  idea  in  the  earlier  dithyrambs,  which  sang  or  acted 
the  adventures  of  Dionysus  merely  as  a  cult,  and  not  as  a 
moral  lesson.  But  it  seems  that  with  Thespis  may  have  arisen 
the  great  conception  which  we  see  full-blown  in  ^Eschylus  —  the 
intention  of  the  drama  to  purify  human  sympathy  by  exercising 
it  on  great  and  apparently  disproportioned  afflictions  of  heroic 
men,  when  the  iron  hand  of  a  stern  and  unforgiving  Providence 
chastises  old  transgressions,  or  represses  the  revolt  of  private 
judgment  against  established  ordinance. 

§  164.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  portraiture  of  suffering  was 
fully  comprehended  by  the  next  among  the  old  tragedians, 
PhrynichitSy  son  of  Polyphradmon,  whom  Aristophanes  *  often 
refers  to  as  an  old  master  of  quaint  sweetness,  and  in  his 
day  still  a  favourite  with  the  last  generation.  There  are  several 
other  persons  of  the  name,  one  of  them  a  comic  poet,2  so  that 
we  cannot  be  sure  concerning  the  allusions  to  him.  His  son 
Polyphradmon,  evidently  called  after  the  grandfather,  seems  to 
have  contended  with  ^Eschylus.  We  have  not  sufficient  fragments 
remaining  to  form  a  strict  judgment,  nor  can  we  now  decide 
how  much  of  the  development  of  tragedy  was  directly  due  to  Jiim. 
He  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  to  introduce  female  characters, 
and  to  use  the  trochaic  tetrameter  in  tragedy.  It  is  also  cer- 
tain that  he  understood  the  use  of  dialogue,  by  separating  the 

1  Av.  75°  '•  ti>9ev  &trirepfl  jj.4  \i-rra 

QpvviX05  o.p&poffluv  yueXeW  ave^ffKero  icapirbv 

&ei  <pfpct>i>  y\vKtiav  <f$ai>. 
Vesp.  219  :  fJLivvpi^oi/Tfs  ^utArj 


Cf.  also  v.  269.  I  quote  uniformly  from  the  $th  ed.  of  Dindorf's  Poeta 
Scenici. 

2  Cf.  on  these  various  persons  the  discussion  of  Meineke,  Hist.  Com. 
Gnzc.  pp.  146,  sq. 


236  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xiv. 

actor  from  the  leader  of  the  chorus,  and  making  them  respond 
to  each  other.  Trimeters  and  Ionics  a  minore  were  metres  not 
unknown  to  him,  but  he  was  most  esteemed  among  later  Greeks 
for  his  lyrical  excellence,  as  the  scholiasts  on  Aristophanes  tell  us. 
Pausanias  l  alludes  to  his  having  first  introduced  the  fatal  brand 
in  the  story  of  Meleager  in  Greek  tragedy,  not,  however,  as  an 
invention  of  his  own,  and  quotes  the  lines  in  question.2  His 
Fhoenissa  was  a  particularly  celebrated  play;  but  we  must 
imagine  chiefly  a  succession  of  lyrical  choruses,  with  little  or 
no  action,  like  the  earlier  tragedies  of  ^Eschylus.  It  seems 
that  the  play  was  brought  out  3  by  Themistocles  as  Choregus, 
and  with  special  reference  to  his  own  achievements,  which  were 
growing  old  in  the  memories  of  the  Athenians,  in  Ol.  75,4; 
and  this  is  the  earliest  exact  notice  we  have  of  a  tragic  com- 
petition such  as  was  afterwards  the  rule  at  Athens.  It  is  said 
that  this  play  was  the  model  on  which  JEschylus  formed  his 
Pcrsce.  More  celebrated  is  the  story  of  the  Capture  of  Miletus 
(MiXijrov  c'iXwirtc),  brought  out  by  the  poet  in  Ol.  71,  which 
described  lyrically  the  capture  and  destruction  of  the  greatest 
of  Ionic  cities.  The  whole  theatre,  says  Herodotus,  burst  into 
tears,  fined  him  1,000  drachmas  for  having  reminded  them 
of  their  domestic  troubles,  and  directed  that  no  one  for  the 
future  should  use  this  drama.4  There  has  been  a  great  deal 
of  aesthetic  lucubration  on  this  celebrated  act  of  the  Athenian 
public  —  much  talk  of  the  ideal,  and  the  desire  to  escape  from 
the  woes  of  common  life  into  an  ideal  atmosphere.  I  feel 
moie  confidence  in  the  critics  who  suspect  a  political  reason 
for  the  play,  and  still  more  for  the  heavy  fine.  Possibly 
the  poet  belonged  to  a  party  who  had  urged  active  aid  for 
Miletus,  and  his  drama  was  a  bitter  and  telling  reproof  to 
the  timid  or  peace  party,  who  may,  nevertheless,  have  been 
politically  the  leaders  of  the  people,  and  able  to  inflict  upon 
him  a  fine  for  harrowing  the  public  mind  with  his  painful  and 


Kpvfpbv  yap  oiiK 

tf\vl;(v  /j.6pov,  o>K€7a  Se  v 

SoAoC  V€p0ofievov  /j.arpbs  fo 
1  Themist.  5,  as  Plutarch  tells  us. 
4  vi.  21.     I  suppose  he  means  —  use  this  story  for  a  drama. 


CH.  xiv.          THE    THEATRE  AT  ATHENS.  237 

distressing  play.  We  see  from  the  success  of  ^schylus' 
Pcrs<z  that  they  had  no  objection  to  being  reminded  of  their 
domestic  successes — certainly  domestic  in  as  real  a  sense  as 
the  events  of  Miletus — and  I  fancy  covert  allusions  to  present 
politics  or  other  events  were  always  well  received  by  the 
Athenians;  but  they  were  certainly  right  to  discourage  the  pre- 
senting of  recent  events  upon  the  stage,  for  Greek  tragedy  was 
in  no  way  suited  for  historical  purposes. 

There  remain  about  seven  titles  of  Phrynichus'  plays,  most 
of  them  the  names  of  nations,  which  seems  to  imply  the  im- 
portance of  his  chorus.  All  the  older  tragic  poets  were  said  to 
be  dancing-masters,  and  to  have  taught  anyone  who  wished  to 
learn  ;  it  is  even  said  that  the  Athenians  appointed  Phrynichus 
to  a  military  command,  on  account  of  his  skill  in  performing 
the  Pyrrhic  war  dance. 

§  165.  Having  now  given  a  sufficient  account  of  the  forerun- 
ners of  ^Eschylus,  it  may  be  well  to  say  something  of  the  ma- 
terials at  the  disposal  of  the  Greek  tragic  poets,  of  their  theatres 
stage,  actors,  and  general  appointments.  When  these  things 
have  been  made  as  plain  as  our  authorities  permit,  we  can  pro- 
ceed to  consider  at  our  leisure  the  works  of  the  three  great 
dramatists  which  have  survived. 

It  is  necessary  to  give  a  brief  description  of  the  Greek 
theatres  themselves,  in  order  to  help  the  reader  better  to  imagine 
for  himself  the  old  tragic  performances,  and  in  order  to  obviate 
certain  errors  which  were  current  on  the  subject,  and  have  only 
been  removed  by  recent  researches.  The  earliest  stone  theatre 
of  which  we  know  the  date  was  the  theatre  of  Dionysus  at 
Athens,  built  (Ol.  70)  against  the  south  slope  of  the  Acropolis. 
It  was  adorned  and  enlarged  by  the  orator  Lycurgus  (about  Ol. 
112),  when  administering  the  finances.  We  are  told  that  before 
its  building  a  wooden  structure  was  used  for  plays,  but  that  on 
the  occasion  of  a  contest  between  ^Eschylus  and  Pratinas  it 
broke  down,  and  then  the  Athenians  determined  to  erect  a 
permanent  one  for  the  purpose.  We  are  not  told  where 
the  old  wooden  theatre  was  situated,  but  as  the  story  implies 
that  the  spectators  fell  (for  the  stage  always  remained  a 
wooden  platform),  it  is  unlikely  that  the  old  site  could  have 


238  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xiv. 

coincided  with  the  new,  where  the  steep  incline  of  the  hill 
made  all  artificial  scaffolding  unnecessary.  If  the  site  was  re- 
tained, we  should  imagine  the  audience  of  the  primitive  trage- 
dies and,  no  doubt,  of  the  older  cyclic  choruses,  to  have  sat  all 
round  the  performance,  so  that  while  at  one  side  the  hill  served 
for  tiers  of  seats,  on  the  other  a  corresponding  incline  was  con- 
structed of  wood.  It  would  then  have  been  this  side  only 
which  could  break  down,  and  the  new  stone  theatre  may  have 
been  on  the  modified  principle  of  enlarging  one  side  of  the 
primitive  amphitheatre  to  hold  all  the  spectators,  and  giving  the 
actors  a  better  stage  with  a  rear  and  side  entrances — a  necessary 
change  when  the  various  illusions  of  varying  dress  and  scenery 
were  invented  and  came  into  use.  While  this  conjecture  would 
explain  the  occurrence  of  the  accident  on  the  present  site  of 
the  theatre,  it  must  be  carefully  noted  that  quite  a  different  place 
at  Athens  also  bore  the  name  of  orchestra,  or  dancing  place, 
and  may  have  had  wooden  seats  applied  in  the  same  way.  This 
orchestra  was  a  small  platform  on  the  north  slope  of  the  Areo- 
pagus, just  above  the  agora,  on  which  the  statues  of  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton,  and  these  only,  were  set  up.  Being  above  the 
throng  of  the  agora,  it  seems  to  have  been  used  in  later  days 
as  a  place  for  book-stalls.  However  this  may  be,  the  stone 
theatre  of  Dionysus  became  the  model  for  similar  buildings  all 
over  the  Greek  world,  which  everywhere  (except  at  Mantinea) 
utilised  the  slope  of  a  hill  for  the  erection  of  stone  seats  in 
ascending  tiers.  These  great  buildings  were  also  used  by 
democracies  for  their  public  assemblies,  and  we  cannot  be  sure 
that  some  of  them  did  not  precede  in  date  the  theatre  of  Dio- 
nysus. A  great  number  of  them  still  remain,  though  in  no 
case,  of  course,  has  the  wooden  stage  survived ;  but  most  of 
them  have  been  modified  by  Roman  work,  especially  in  the 
form  of  permanent  and  lofty  walls  of  masonry  at  the  back  of 
the  stage.  Happily  in  some  cities  the  Roman  theatre  was 
built  separately,  and  near  the  Greek,  and  this  is  the  case  at 
Athens  and  at  Syracuse.  The  others  which  are  most  perfect, 
such  as  that  of  Aspendus  in  Pamphylia,  and  Taormina  in  Sicily, 
contain  Greek  and  Roman  work  jumbled  together.  But  there 
are  remains  throughout  all  Greek-speaking  lands  of  these 


CH.XIV.  THE   THEATRE.  239 

theatres,  in  which  plays  were  performed  as  soon  as  Athens  had 
shown  the  way.  At  Epidauros,  Argos,  Mantinea,  Megalopolis, 
in  the  Peloponnesus  alone,  there  are  huge  remains  of  Greek 
theatres.  The  smallest  and  steepest  known  to  me  is  that  of 
Chagronea  in  Boeotia. 

The  whole  circuit  of  seats,  generally  semicircular  (sometimes 
even  a  greater,  but  never  a  less  segment  of  a  circle),  was  called  TO 
K-olXoj',  and  held  the  sitting  room  (tSwXiov)  of  the  spectators,  who 
were  called  the  theatre^  as  we  say  the  house,  in  old  times.  It  was 
separated  into  concentric  strips  by  one  or  more  walks  called 
2ta£w^ara.  A  radiating  series  of  flights  of  steps  (cararo/m/),  as- 
cending from  below,  divided  these  strips  of  seats  into  wedge- 
formed  divisions  (KtpKilts).  In  most  cases,  the  spectators  came 
in  at  the  sides,  between  the  stage  and  the  seats,  and  ascended 
by  these  steps.  The  seats  were  broad  and  comfortable,  but  each 
person  brought  a  cushion,  or  had  it  brought  for  him  by  a  slave, 
who  was  not  allowed  to  wait  during  the  performance.  In  some 
later  theatres  there  were  outside  staircases,  which  brought  the 
spectators  to  the  top  of  the  theatre,  where  they  entered  the 
highest  level  through  a  colonnade.  The  audience  had  no  cover- 
ing over  them,  and  were  exposed  to  all  extremes  of  weather. 
We  do  not  know  what  was  done  in  the  case  of  rain,  but 
it  is  probable  that  the  stage  had  a  penthouse  projecting  from 
the  back  wall,  which  protected  the  actors.  The  price  of 
admission  was  fixed  at  two  obols  for  the  Athenian  theatre, 
which  went  to  the  manager  for  its  support,  and  which  was  paid 
from  the  public  funds  to  the  poorer  citizens  at  Athens,  in  the 
days  of  the  Athenian  Empire,  by  way  of  affording  all  of  them  the 
opportunity  of  joint  religious  enjoyment  which  the  feast  of 
Dionysus  offered,  Women  and  boys  were  admitted  to  the  tra- 
gedies, but  the  former  were  certainly  excluded  from  the  comedies 
in  older  days,  and  for  obvious  reasons.  There  were  reserved 
seats  in  front,  and  the  privilege  of  admission  to  them  (7rpoe?pia) 
was  highly  prized.  It  was  given  to  magistrates  and  foreign 
ambassadors  in  early  days,  but  on  the  marble  armchairs  of  the 
front  row  in  the  theatre  of  Dionysus,  as  re-discovered  in  1862, 
the  names  of  religious  dignitaries  are  inscribed,  the  priest 
of  Dionysus  Eleutherios  possessing  the  central  stall.  This 


24C  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xiv. 

arrangement  does  not,  however,  date  before  the  days  of  He- 
rodes  Atticus.  There  is  no  evidence  whatever  that  the  Athenian 
democracy  allowed  the  front  seats  to  be  reserved  for  the  richer 
classes  who  could  pay  a  higher  entrance  fee.1 

The  number  of  spectators  must  often  have  comprised  the 
whole  male  population  of  a  large  town  and  its  suburbs,  besides 
sundry  strangers,  women  and  children.  Some  of  the  remaining 
theatres  would  easily  hold  10,000  people.  It  is  consequently 
evident  that  all  could  not  have  seen  or  heard  delicate  points 
upon  the  stage.  This,  as  will  be  seen,  had  no  small  effect  upon 
the  way  in  which  Greek  tragedies  were  brought  upon  the  stage. 
Nevertheless,  Iwill  observe,  that  in  the  great  theatre  of  Syra- 
cuse, I  myself  tested  its  acoustic  properties,  and  found  that  a 
friend  talking  in  his  ordinary  tone  could  be  heard  perfectly  at 
the  farthest  seat — this,  too,  with  the  back  of  the  stage  open  ; 
whereas  it  was  in  the  old  performances  closed  by  lofty  scenes, 
and  an  upper  story  from  which  gods  were  shown  and  oft 
descended  upon  the  stage. 

§  1 66.  We  pass  from  the  circle  of  spectators  to  the  part  of  the 
building  (op-xfivrpa)  corresponding  to  the  pit  of  modern  theatres. 
The  greater  part  of  this  was  smoothed,  empty,  and  strewed  with 
sand,  hence  called  Koviarpa.  In  the  centre  was  an  altar  to  Dio- 
nysus (Ov/j£\r]),  the  relic  of  the  old  times  when  nothing  but 
choral  dances  had  been  held  in  the  area  round  the  altar.  But 
in  the  part  nearest  the  stage,  which  corresponds  to  our  stage 
boxes  and  orchestra,  was  a  raised  floor  of  wood,  called,  more 
specially  and  scenically,  orchestra,  or  dancing  place  of  the 
chorus,  beginning  at  the  altar,  and  communicating  by  steps 
with  the  stage,  which  was  somewhat  higher.  The  chorus  was  a 
sort  of  stage  audience,  at  times  addressing  the  actors,  and 
answering  them  through  their  leader,  at  times  reflecting  upon 
them  independently,  especially  in  the  choral  songs,  which 
divided  what  we  may  call  the  acts  of  the  play.  The  chorus  was 
not  an  ideal  spectator,  far  from  it,  but  rather  represented  the 
average  morality  or  courage  of  the  public,  as  contrasted  with 

1  This  has  been  often  asserted,  owing  to  a  misconception  of  the  pas- 
sage in  Plato,  Apol.  Socr.  §  26,  which  speaks  of  buying  the  work  of  Anaxa- 
goras  at  the  other  orchestra  above  mentioned  for  a  drachme. 


CH.  xiv.  THE  STAGE.  241 

the  heroic  character  of  the  protagonist,  or  chief  actor.  Thus 
we  find  it  frequently  supporting  the  deuteragonist,  or  second 
actor,  who  was  a  foil  for  the  principal  personage.  As  M.  Patin 
admirably  remarks,  apropos  of  the  chorus  of  the  Antigone  :  *  '  It 
has  not  been  sufficiently  observed  what  moral  defects  the  Greek 
poets  attach  to  the  part  which  in  these  plays  represents  the 
interests  of  general  morality.  While  assigning  to  the  chorus 
those  lofty  ideas  of  order  and  of  justice  which  dwell  in  every 
heart,  and  come  naturally  from  the  lips  of  all  as  the  voice  ot 
conscience,  they  took  care  to  add  to  this  somewhat  imaginary 
role,  by  way  of  realism,  the  vulgar  features  common  to  every 
multitude.  The  speech  of  the  chorus  was  pure  and  noble  ;  its 
conduct  cowardly,  cautious,  selfish,  and  marked  by  the  weak- 
ness and  egotism  which  are  the  vice  of  the  common  herd,  and 
are  only  wanting  in  the  exceptional  few,  both  of  tragedy  and 
of  real  life.'  But  when  it  watched  the  progress  of  the  play,  the 
scenes  must  have  been  not  unlike  the  play  within  the  play  in 
Hamlet,  except  that  the  great  personages  were  in  the  Greek  play 
the  observed  of  the  inferior  observers.  The  entrances  to  the 
orchestra  were  the  same  as  those  of  the  audience,  from  the 
sides  (Trapofioi),  between  the  stage  and  the  tiers  of  seats,  and  it  is 
certain  that  there  was  no  separate  place  for  musicians,  as  the 
accompaniments  to  the  choral  songs,  which  were  sung  ap 
parently  in  unison,  were  of  the  slightest  kind — perhaps  a  single 
fluteplayer  behind  the  scenes. 

From  the  orchestra  we  mount  by  a  few  steps  to  the  stage, 
and  its  appurtenances.  It  was  technically  called  irpoaKijnov,  or 
the  place  in  front  of  the  «•*.-») j%  which  was  originally  the  king's 
tent,  or  dwelling  of  the  chief  character,  but,  in  ordinary  Greek 
parlance,  nothint;  more  than  the  background  of  the  stage.  A 
particular  place  in  *he  centre  of  the  proscenium,  or  stage,  ap- 
pears to  have  been  slightly  raised,  and  specially  used  in  great 
declamations:  this  was  called  the  \o-ytiov.  The  whole  stage  was 
very  long  and  narrow,  spanning  all  the  way  from  one  side  of  the 
huge  circle  of  spectators  to  the  other.  As  the  chorus  were 
brought  forward  to  their  place  in  the  orchestra,  the  Greek 
theatre  required  no  deep  stage  room,  and  had  ample  space  for 
1  Sophode,  p.  260. 

VOL.  I. — II 


242  HISTORY   OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XIV. 

its  very  few  characters  within  a  narrow  place.1  There  was  cer- 
tainly one  passage  leading  out  from  under  the  stage,  and  known 
technically  as  Charon's  stairs ;  but  the  old  stages  which  I  have 
examined  show  such  complicated  substructures,  so  many  separate 
short  walls  and  passages  in  their  foundations,  that  I  fancy  there 
must  have  been  more  to  be  done  under  the  Greek  stage  than 
most  scholars  imagine.  The  front  of  the  raised  stage,  which 
was  hidden  by  the  scenic  orchestra,  was  called  viroadiviov. 

§  167.  There  was  not  much  change  of  dress  in  the  Greek 
plays,  but  still  some  green  room  must  have  been  required  ;  it  is 
never  alluded  to  by  our  authorities,  and  was,  I  fancy,  a  wooden 
structure  at  the  side  of  the  stage,  which  could  b'e  removed 
with  the  other  woodwork.  In  the  back  wall  of  the  stage,  the 
doors,  three  in  number,  indicated  the  position  of  the  actor 
who  first  entered  through  them.2  The  middle  door  was  for 
the  chief  actor,  the  right  for  his  foil  or  supporter  (deuteragonist), 
the  left  for  his  contrast  or  opponent  (tritagonist).  These 
parts  were  as  much  fixed  as  those  of  the  soprano,  tenor,  and 
barytone  in  modern  operas,  but  of  course  for  musical  and  ses- 
thetical  reasons  the  two  principal  voices  are  there  co-ordinated, 
whereas  this  was  never  done  by  the  Greeks.  Messengers,  who 
played  an  important  part  in  reciting  stirring  scenes,  came  in,  if 
from  the  home  or  city  of  the  actors,  by  the  right  parodos ;  if 
from  abroad,  by  the  left  side  of  the  theatre,  and  went  out  by 
the  orchestra ;  we  find  that  in  some  theatres  an  additional  door 
at  each  end  of  the  stage  was  provided  for  this  purpose.  These 
fixed  arrangements  served  to  a  certain  extent  instead  of  play 
bills,  which  the  Greeks  did  not  use.  The  back  scene  was,  as  I 
have  said,  lofty,  and  made  of  painted  wooden  panels  and  hang- 

1  With  the  decay  of  the  chorus,  the  stage  was  made  narrower,  and  the 
ornamental  front  with  marble  figures,  which  we  admire  in  the  present  re- 
mains of  the  theatre  at  Athens,  was  not  built  till  the  third  century  A.D., 
and  was  moved  back  eight  or  nine  yards  from  the  original  limit  of  the 
proscenium,  in  the  days  of  elaborate  choric  dances,  and  of  dialogues  be- 
tween the  chorus  and  the  actors.     The  decoration  of  this  surface  seems  to 
imply  that  no  scaffolding  for  an  orchestra  was  then  required  in  front  of  it. 

2  It  is  not  to  be  imagined  that  this  was  an  absolute  rule.     The  chief 
personage  was  in  most  plays  easily  to  be  distinguished  without  any  such  for- 
mality.    Cf.  Bernhardy,  ii.  p.  93. 


CH.  xiv.  THE  BACK-SCENES.  243 

ings,  for  when  the  Romans  came  to  build  similar  theatres,  they 
built  up  this  scene  of  masonry,  which  still  remains  in  many 
places — most  perfectly  at  the  splendid  theatre  of  Aspendus  in 
Pamphylia.  The  upper  story  represented  by  this  architectural 
front  was  called  episcenium,  and  the  wings,  when  they  came  for- 
ward and  closed  the  ends  of  the  stage,  parascenia.  When 
change  of  place  was  required,  there  existed  scene  shifting,  in 
the  sense  of  drawing  back  to  the  sides  temporary  structures. 
As  there  was  seldom,  if  ever,  more  than  one  change  of  scene 
in  a  Greek  tragedy,  we  can  imagine  the  movable  scenes  used 
first,  and  drawn  away,  along  with  the  revolution  of  the  periacti, 
to  make  way  for  the  view  painted  on  the  permanent  back 
scene  of  the  stage.  For  it  is  certain  that  at  the  parascenia 
were  fixed  two  lofty  triangular  prisms,  called  revolvers  (irtpiaKToi), 
on  each  face  of  which  a  different  scene  was  painted,  so 
that,  according  as  the  'foreign  parts'  especially  of  the  play 
changed,  the  right  TT£(>iaKTO£  yujyx0"''/  was  turned  (fKKVKXelv), 
These  prisms  must  also  have  served  to  conceal  such  scenes  as 
were  drawn  back,  when  not  required.  There  was  some  compli- 
cated machinery  in  the  upper  story  of  the  back  scene,  which 
enabled  the  gods  to  appear  in  the  air,  and  address  the  actors 
from  a  place  called  the  gods'  stage  (fleoAoyttor).  This  machinery 
seems  to  have  been  hidden  by  a  large  curtain  (jcarajf&q/m)  hung 
from  above,  but  I  suspect  that  this  device  did  not  exist  in  the 
early  days  of  tragedy. 

It  is  important  to  notice  the  lofty  and  permanent  character 
of  the  wooden,  and  afterwards  brick,  structures  at  the  back  of 
the  stage,  as  it  destroys  various  sentimental  notions  of  modern 
art  critics  about  the  lovely  natural  scenery  selected  by  the  Greeks 
to  form  the  background  of  their  stage.  It  is  still  believed  by 
many  that  the  Greeks  desired  to  combine  the  beauties  of  a 
lovely  view  with  the  ideal  splendour  of  mythical  tragic  heroes. 
Modern  research  has  completely  exploded  the  absurd  idea.  It 
is  possible  that,  at  the  highest  and  worst  back  seats,  some 
lofty  mountain  behind  the  stage  might  have  been  visible, 
but  I  am  sure  the  intention  of  all  the  arrangements  was  to 
exclude  such  disturbance,  and  to  fix  the  attention  of  the 
spectators  on  the  play  and  its  scenic  surroundings.  The 


24-1  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XIV. 

sites  of  the  Greek  theatres  were  simply  determined  by  the 
ground,  and  if  almost  every  ascending  slope  near  a  city  in 
Greece  affords  a  fair  prospect  of  sea  and  islands,  and  rugged 
outlines,  we  know  that  the  Greeks  of  all  civilised  people  thought 
least  about  landscapes  as  such,  and  neglected  the  picturesque. 
§  1 68.  This  reflection  leads  me  naturally  to  say  a  few  words 
about  the  scene-painting  of  the  Greeks.  When  ^Eschylus  arose, 
painting  was  in  its  infancy,  and  it  was  not  till  the  empire  of  Athens 
was  well  established  that  the  first  great  artist  Polygnotus  (about 
Ol.  78)  rose  into  fame.  But  he  was  altogether  a  figure  painter, 
and  seems  to  have  known  nothing  of  perspective.  Towards  the 
end  of  ^Eschylus'  life,  Agatharchus  first  began  to  study  the  art 
of  scene-painting,  with  the  view  of  producing  some  illusion  by 
means  of  perspective,  and  wrote  a  treatise  on  the  subject.  The 
optical  questions  involved  were  taken  up  by  Anaxagoras  and 
Democritus,  and  Apollodorus  (about  400  B.C.)  may  be  regarded 
as  having  brought  to  perfection  this  branch  of  art  Both  he 
and  Agatharchus  are  classed  as  skenographers,  or  skiographers 
(ffKfivoypcufHH,  <moypttyot),  these  terms  being  used  as  synonymous, 
and  showing  that  the  painting  of  shadows  was  first  attempted  in 
order  to  produce  effects  of  perspective  in  scene-painting.  There 
can  be  no  doubt,  from  an  analysis  of  the  scenes  of  our  extant 
plays,  that  the  great  majority  of  these  paintings  was  architectu- 
ral, and  the  representation  of  Greek  palaces  and  temples,  with 
their  many  long  straight  lines,  particularly  required  a  knowledge 
of  perspective.  It  is  not  certain  that  the  old  Greeks,  in  spite 
of  their  philosophic  studies,  were  very  perfect  in  this  respect, 
for  the  architectural  subjects  in  the  Pompeian  frescoes  are  very 
faulty,  perhaps,  however,  because  they  were  the  work  of  igno- 
rant persons,  who  never  learnt  the  better  traditions  of  the 
ancients.  Some  few  plays  were  laid  in  gamps,  and  wild  deserts, 
such  as  the  Ajax  and  Philoctetes  of  Sophocles ;  but  by  this  time 
scene-painting  had  become  an  established  art.  To  judge  from 
the  landscapes  of  Pompeii,  these  scenes  had  a  very  lofty  blue 
sky  painted  above  them,  which  was  doubtless  intended  to  ex- 
clude the  natural  background  from  the  spectators.  In  the 
comedies,  concerning  which  we  have  but  little  information  in 
detail,  familiar  and  everyday  scenes  in  Attica  must  have  been 


CH.  xiv.  RULES  FOR   COMPETITIONS.  245 

painted,  and  it  would  be  most  interesting  to  know  what  amount 
of  reality  satisfied  the  Athenian  audience.  In  the  tragedies,  the 
scenes  were  either  of  remote  palaces,  or  at  least  of  palaces  and 
cities  in  ancient  and  mythical  times,  so  that  no  close  approxi- 
mation to  the  cities  of  the  period  would  be  required. 

§  169.  Above  all,  we  must  insist  upon  the  staid  and  conserva- 
tive character  of  all  the  Attic  tragedy.  The  subjects  were  almost 
as  fixed  as  the  scenery,  being  always,  or  almost  always,  subjects 
from  the  Trojan  and  Theban  cycle,  with  occasional  excursions 
into  the  myths  about  Heracles.  But  in  treating  the  Trojan  myths, 
we  find  a  distinct  avoidance  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  a 
use  of  the  cyclic  poems  instead.  There  are  indeed  a  few  titles 
from  our  Homer,  but  they  are  so  constantly  satyric  dramas,  that 
I  suppose  this  was  according  to  some  rule,  and  that  Homer, 
from  his  sanctity,  or  owing  to  the  too  great  familiarity  of  the 
audience  with  him,  was  deliberately  avoided. 

The  uniformity  of  subjects  was  moreover  paralleled  by  the 
uniformity  of  the  dress — the  festal  costume  of  Bacchus — and  by 
the  fixed  masks  for  the  characters,  which  allowed  no  play  of 
feature.  So  aiso  I  fancy  the  older  actors  to  have  been  mono- 
tonous and  simple  in  their  playing.  Later  on  we  know  that  they 
became  popular  and  were  a  much  distinguished  class,  and  then 
they  began  to  take  liberties  with  their  texts,  as  we  hear  from  many 
scholia.  These  liberties  were  repressed  by  a  wholesome  law 
of  the  orator  Lycurgus,  who  enacted  that  official  copies  of 
the  plays  of  the  three  great  tragic  masters  should  be  made,  and 
no  new  performance  of  them  allowed  without  the  applicant  for 
the  chorus  and  his  company  having  their  acting  copies  com- 
pared with  the  state  MS. 

As  soon  as  tragic  choruses  and  other  dramatic  performances 
became  recognised  by  the  state  at  Athens,  they  were  not  left  to 
chance  or  to  individual  enterprise.  The  chorus  was  dressed 
and  trained  at  the  public  expense,  and  the  poet  who  desired  to 
have  his  piece  performed  must  go  to  the  archon,1  and  ask 
to  have  a  chorus  assigned  to  him.  The  actors  were  said  to 
have  been  distributed  by  lot,  but  in  later  days,  we  find  parti- 
cular actors  so  associated  with  poets  that  some  more  permanent 
1  The  eponymus  at  the  Dionysia,  the  king  archon  at  the  Lenaa. 


ttf>  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH  xiv. 

connection  must  be  assumed.  The  archon  granted  choruses  to 
the  most'  promising  applicants,  so  that  young  and  unknown 
poets  were  fain  to  produce  their  piece  under  the  name  of  an 
influential  friend.  The  poet,  with  the  aid  of  a  professional 
choir  master,  trained  his  chorus  in  the  lyrical  songs,  and  in 
early  days  took  the  chief  acting  part  himself. 

§  1 70.  Unfortunately  we  know  hardly  anything  of  the  way  in 
which  the  competitions  were  managed,  or  how  many  plays  were 
produced  on  the  same  day,  and  in  succession.  We  know  certainly 
that  they  were  composed  (even  by  Euripides)  in  tetralogies,  in 
groups  of  four,  and  their  average  length  being  moderate,  I  fancy  a 
trilogy  would  not  take  up  more  time  than  the  playing  of  Ham- 
let, followed  by  a  short  farce  or  satyric  drama.  But  how  could 
the  audience  endure  more  than  this  at  one  time  ;  and  yet  we 
know  that  many  of  our  extant  plays  obtained  the  third  prize, 
showing  that  twelve  plays  must  have  been  acted.  It  is  abso- 
lutely certain  that  such  a  competition  must  have  lasted  several 
days,  and  I  believe  that  twelve  plays  was  the  limit ;  for  when  I 
note  the  difficulty  of  '  obtaining  a  chorus,'  and  that  even  good 
poets  were  refused  ;  when  I  also  observe  that  the  third  place 
was  considered  a  disgrace,  I  infer  that  the  number  of  competi- 
tors must  have  been  limited,  and  that  there  were  not  lower 
places  than  the  third  to  be  assigned.  But  when  we  hear  that 
Sophocles  contended,  '  play  against  play,'  by  way  of  novelty, 
and  that  single  plays  from  a  group  were  called  victorious,  and 
yet  that  Euripides  competed  with  groups,  none  of  which  has 
survived  entire,  we  find  ourselves  in  hopeless  perplexities. 

As  to  the  adjudication  of  the  prizes,  it  was  made  by  judges 
selected  from  the  audience  by  lot,  and  no  doubt  led  by  the 
public  reception  of  the  piece  ;  but  their  decision  seems  often  to 
have  been  exceedingly  bad.  As  we  have  not  the  rival  pieces  of 
any  competition  for  comparison,  we  may  not  dogmatise  ;  but 
still,  when  the  scholiasts  wonder  at  the  CEdipus  Rex  being  de- 
feated, and  when  we  find  the  Medea  disgraced  by  obtaining  the 
third  place,  we  cannot  help  suspecting  that  the  judgment  of  the 
day  was  utterly  wrong.  Each  victory  was  commemorated  by  a 
tripod,  which  was  erected  on  an  ornamental  pillar  or  building 
like  the  choragic  monument  of  Lysicrates,  still  extant  at  Athens, 


CH.  xiv.  DIONYSIA  AND  LEN^EA.  247 

and  from  these  inscribed  monuments  were  drawn  the  valu- 
able didascalia  which  Aristotle  first  collected,  and  from  which 
Aristophanes  (of  Byzantium)  afterwards  compiled  his  invaluable 
prefaces  to  all  the  plays.  Our  extant  prefaces  ieem  to  copy 
their  chronological  data — the  year  of  the  play,  its  competitors, 
and  its  place — whenever  they  vouchsafe  us  such  information. 
Had  Aristophanes'  work  been  preserved,  the  whole  history  ot 
the  drama  would  be  in  a  far  different  condition. 

§  171.  There  is  still  some  hope  of  further  light  on  this  im- 
portant  point.  Fragments  of  lists  of  dramatic  authors,  and  their 
victories,  are  still  being  found  about  the  acropolis  and  the  theatre 
at  Athens,  and  from  the  publications  of  them  by  Komanudes 
in  the  Athenaion,  Bergk  has  endeavoured  to  reconstruct  the 
chronology  of  the  drama.1  His  conclusions  have  been  con- 
tested by  Kohler,2  and  are  as  yet  uncertain.  But  he  has  pro- 
bably established  this  much,  that  while  the  tragic  contests  were 
carried  on  at  the  greater  Dionysia  in  the  city,  and  in  spring 
time,  and  recorded  since  about  Ol.  64,  the  winter  feast  of  the 
Lensea  in  the  suburbs  was  originally  devoted  to  comedy,  which 
was  not  recognised  by  the  state  till  about  Ol.  79.  In  Ol.  84 
new  regulations  were  introduced,  probably  by  Pericles,  accord- 
ing to  which  tragic  contests  were  established  at  the  Lenasa,  and 
comic  admitted  to  the  greater  Dionysia.  From  this  time  both 
kinds  of  contests  were  carried  on  at  both  feasts,  and  in  the  great 
theatre.3  But  as  the  Lenaa  was  only  a  home  feast,  and  not 
attended  by  strangers,  a  victory  gained  there  was  by  no  means 
of  the  same  importance  as  a  victory  before  the  great  concourse 
of  citizens  and  visitors  in  the  spring,  and  consequently  they 
were  separately  catalogued.  This  accounts  for  variations  in  the 
number  of  prizes  ascribed  to  the  poets,  some  lists  comprising 
all,  others  only  the  city  prizes.  No  poet  (except  Sophocles) 
seems  to  have  gained  this  latter  distinction  often,  and  many 
prolific  authors  obtained  it  only  once  or  twice.  But,  as  has  been 
already  remarked,  the  verdict  of  the  judges  is  not  to  be  taken 
as  a  conclusive  estimate  of  real  merit. 

1  Cf.  Rhein.  Mus.  for  1879,  pp.  292,  sq. 

2  In  the  Memoirs  of  the  German  Arch.  Inst.  ofAthens,vo\.  iii.  pp.  104,  sq. 

3  The  lesser  or  country  Dionysia  were  celebrated  at  a  theatre  in  the 
Piraeus. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

AESCHYLUS. 

§  172.  THE  facts  known  to  us  about  the  life  of  ^schylus  are 
few,  and  decked  out  with  many  fables.  He  was  the  son  of 
Euphorion,  born  at  Eleusis,  the  town  of  the  Mysteries,  in  525 
B.C.  He  contended  with  Chcerilus  and  Pratinas,  as  well  as 
Phrynichus,  fiom  about  500  B.C.,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that 
he  learned  a  great  deal  from  the  art  of  the  latter.  His  first 
tragic  victory  was  in  Ol.  73,  4  (485),  and  from  this  time  down  to 
the  middle  of  the  century  he  worked  with  all  the  energy  and 
patience  of  a  great  genius  at  his  art.  He  fought  in  the  battles 
of  the  great  Persian  war,  and  was  wounded,  it  is  said,  at 
Marathon,  at  which  his  brother  Kynsegirus  fell.  He  contended 
against  Simonides  with  an  elegy  to  be  inscribed  over  the  fallen, 
but  was  defeated.  According  to  the  most  credible  account 
he  won  thirteen  tragic  victories.  He  confessed  it  impossible 
to  excel  the  Hymn  to  Zeus  of  the  obscure  Tynnichus,  on 
account  of  its  antique  piety,  which  gave  it  the  character  of 
an  inspiration.1  And  yet  he  is  reported  to  have  been  exceed- 
ingly hurt  at  the  success  of  Sophocles  in  tragedy,  by  whom  he 
was  defeated  in  468  B.C.  This  may  have  induced  him  to  leave 
Athens  and  go  to  Sicily,  an  island  which  he  had  already  visited 
in  Ol.  76  at  the  invitation  of  Hiero,  for  whom  he  had  written  a 
local  piece  called  the  sEtnaans,  to  celebrate  the  foundation  of 
the  city  of  ^Etna  on  the  site  of  the  earlier  (and  later)  Catana. 
He  also  brought  out  at  Syracuse  a  new  edition  of  his  Persians. 
A  better  cause  alleged  for  his  second  departure  from  Athens 
was  the  suspicion  or  accusation  under  which  he  lay  of  having 
divulged  the  Mysteries.  He  is  even  said  to  have  been  publicly 

1  Cf.  Bergk,  FZ.G.,  p.  1 1 II 


CH.  xv.  LIFE   OF  AESCHYLUS.  249 

attacked,  and,  though  he  pleaded  that  he  was  unaware  of  his 
crime,  was  saved  with  difficulty  by  the  Areopagus.  If  this  be 
so,  we  can  understand  his  splendid  advocacy  of  that  ancient 
and  venerable  court,  when  attacked  by  Ephialtes,  in  his 
Eitmenides,  the  third  play  of  the  extant  trilogy  with  which 
he  conquered  in  Ol.  80,  2  (458).  He  must  have  been  at  thu- 
moment  one  of  the  most  important  leaders  of  the  conser- 
vative party,  and  have  had  far  more  weight  through  his  plays 
than  most  men  could  attain  by  their  eloquence  on  the  bema. 
Nevertheless  we  hear  of  him  dying  at  Gela  in  Sicily  within  three 
years  of  this  great  triumph.  The  people  of  Gela  erected 
him  a  splendid  tomb ;  the  Athenians  not  only  set  up  his  statue 
in  public,  but  rewarded  and  equipped  any  choregus  in  aftei 
days  who  would  bring  out  again  the  works  of  so  great  and 
acknowledged  a  master. 

Even  this  brief  sketch  can  hardly  be  called  certain  as  to 
its  facts  ;  the  many  fables  about  his  relationships,  about  his 
death,  and  about  his  professional  jealousies  have  been  here 
deliberately  omitted.  I  only  know  of  two  personal  recollections 
of  him  which  still  survive,  beyond  the  remark  on  Tynnichus 
above  mentioned.  He  was  sitting  beside  Ion  of  Chios  at  the 
Isthmian  games ;  the  audience  cried  out  when  one  of  the 
boxers  got  a  severe  blow,  whereupon  he  nudged  Ion,  and  said  : 
'  See  what  training  does,  the  man  who  is  struck  says  nothing, 
while  the  spectators  cry  out.' *  He  is  said  to  have  described 
his  tragedies  as  morsels  (re/jax'y)  gathered  from  the  mighty 
feasts  of  Homer.  This  very  humble  claim  and  loyal  feeling 
towards  the  old  epics  do  not  bespeak  a  jealous  or  self-asserting 
character.  Of  his  plays  there  remain  seventy-two  titles,  of 
which  over  sixty  seem  genuine,  and  a  good  many  fragments, 
but  only  seven  actual  pieces  :  the  Supplices  (tVenSec),  probably 
brought  out  in  Ol.  71  or  72;  the  Persa,  76,  4;  the  Seven 
against  Thebes,  78,  i2;  the  Prometheus  Vinctus,  not  before 
"75,  2,  in  which  the  eruption  of  ^Etna  alluded  to  in  the  play 

1  This  is  reported  by  Pluiarch,  De profect.  in  virt.  c.  8. 

2  The  statement  put  into  ^Eschylus'  mouth  in  the  Frogs  (v.  1026,  sq.) 
seems  as  if  this  usually  received  order  were  wrong,  and  the  Seven  against 
Thebes  came  earlier  than  the  Persiz. 

II* 


250  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

occurred,  but  probably  as  late  as  Ol.  79.  Lastly,  his  greatest 
and  most  perfect  work,  the  Orestean  trilogy,  consisting  of  the 
Agamemnon,  Choephori,  and  Eumenides,  in  Ol.  80,  2,  shortly 
before  his  death. 

§  173.  I  take  the  Supplices  first,  because  it  is  decidedly  a 
specimen  of  the  early  and  simple  tragedy  developed  by  .^Eschy- 
lus;  nor  do  I  agree  with  some  great  critics  who  have  thought  it 
composed  as  late  as  Ol.  79,  on  account  of  its  complimentary 
allusions  to  Argos.  In  the  first  place  the  chorus  is  the  principal 
actor  in  this  play — the  daughters  of  Danaus,  who  have  come  as 
Suppliants  to  Argos,  to  escape  the  marriage  of  their  cousins, 
the  sons  of  JEgyptus.  In  the  next  place,  the  number  of  the 
chorus  in  the  play  seems  to  have  been  fifty,  whereas  in  ^Es- 
chylus'  later  days  it  was  reduced  to  fifteen  or  twelve  persons. 
"There  is  indeed  a  notice  of  Suidas  that  Sophocles  raised 
the  old  number  twelve  to  fifteen,  which  would  imply  twelve 
Suppliants  only ;  but  the  fixed  traditional  number  of  the 
Danaides,  and  the  ample  space  on  the  orchestra,  in  a  play 
where  there  was  no  dancing,  seem  to  make  the  full  number  not 
impossible  in  this  play.  I  have  no  doubt  that  it  was  the 
requirements  of  this  play  which  at  all  events  made  the  critics 
think  of  fifty  choristers.  The  main  body  of  the  piece  consists  in 
long  choric  songs  complaining  of  the  violence  of  the  sons  of 
yEgyptus,  the  unholy  character  of  the  marriage  they  proposed, 
and  the  anxieties  of  the  fugitives.  These  odes  are  merely 
interrupted  by  the  actors — their  father  Danaus,  Pelasgus,  the 
King  of  Argos,  and  the  petulant  Egyptian  herald,  who  endea- 
vours to  hurry  them  off  to  the  ship  which  has  just  arrived  to 
bring  them  back.  The  King  of  Argos  is  represented  as  a 
respectable  monarch,  who,  though  absolute,  will  not  decide 
without  appealing  to  the  vote  of  his  people,  who  generously 
accept  the  risk  of  protecting  the  Suppliants.  But  the  cautious 
benevolence  of  Pelasgus,  and  the  insolence  of  the  Egyptian 
herald,  can  hardly  be  called  character-drawing,  and  the  whole 
drama,  having  hardly  any  plot,  is  a  good  specimen  of  that 
simple  structure  with  which  Attic  tragedy  developed  itself  out 
of  a  mere  cyclic  chorus.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  that 
though  the  individuals  are  so  slightly  sketched,  there  is  the 


CH.  xv.  THE  SUFPLICES.  251 

most  distinct  characterising  of  nationalities  throughout  the 
play.  Not  only  is  the  very  speech  of  the  Danaides  full  of 
strange-sounding  words,  as  if  to  suggest  their  foreign  origin, 
but  there  is  the  strongest  aversion  conveyed  by  the  poet  for 
the  Egyptians,  as  a  violent  and  barbarous  people,  whose  better 
few  can  only  find  protection  in  Argos.  The  Argives,  again, 
are  described  as  an  honourable,  somewhat  democratic  people, 
not  perhaps  very  different  from  the  stage  Athenians  under 
Theseus.  There  is  little  known  of  the  other  plays  in  the 
trilogy,  or  of  the  satyric  piece  which  followed.  The  horror 
of  a  marriage  with  cousins  seems  so  absurd  in  the  Egyptian 
princesses  that  it  must  have  been  explained  by  the  course 
of  a  preceding  play,  and  the  critics  are  agreed  that  the  so- 
called  Danaides  followed,  wherein  the  marriage  and  murder 
of  the  sons  of  ^Egyptus  took  place,  and  the  trial  of  Hyperm- 
nestra,  who  alone  disobeyed  her  father.  She  seems  to  have 
been  acquitted  by  the  interference  of  Aphrodite  herself,  on  the 
ground  of  her  own  all-powerful  influence  on  the  human  mind, 
and  from  her  speech  Athenaeus  has  preserved  for  us  some  fine 
lines. l 

Though  this  play  is  the  least  striking  of  those  extant,  and, 
from  the  little  a'ttention  paid  to  it,  very  corrupt,  and  often 
hard  to  decipher,  there  are  all  the  highest  vEschylean  features 
in  germ  throughout  it.  Thus  in  the  very  first  chorus,  not  to 
speak  of  the  elegant  allusion  to  the  nightingale,  already  cele- 
brated in  the  Odyssey,  there  is  a  splendid  passage  on  the 
Divine  Providence,  which  breathes  all  the  lofty  theology  so 
admirable  in  ^Eschylus.2 

1  epa  fjLtv  ayvbs  ovpavbs  rpcoffai  ~)(Q6va, 

epus  5e  yaiav  \a.fj./3d.vei  yd(j.ov  rvx.fiv 
o/j./3pos  5'  air'  evvdevros  ovpavov  ittffltiv 
fKvfff  yaiav'  ^  8e  TiKrerai  fipoTois 
I^Kcav  re  fioffK&s  Kal  fttov  Ayfji-fiTpiov 
SepSpcoTts  8>pa  8'  fK  VOTI^OVTOS  ydfjiov 
Tf\et6s  effrt.     rcav   8'  fyk  irapatTtos. 
VV.  86,  sq.  :    Aibs  fytepos  OVK  evd-fiparos  f 
•jrdvra  TOI  (f>\fye8ei 
HO.V  ffK6r<f  fj.eKa.iva  t,vv  T 
fj.fp6ireffcri  \aois, 


252  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

So  also  future  punishments  are  threatened.1  The  concluding 
prayer  of  blessing  on  Argos,  sung  by  the  grateful  Suppliants,  is 
very  fine,  and  there  is  all  through  the  play  an  abundance  of 
that  mighty  diction  in  which  the  epithets  and  figures  come 
rolling  in  upon  us  like  Atlantic  waves.  It  is  this  feature  in 
^Eschylus  which  makes  him  so  untranslateable.2 

I  will  observe,  in  conclusion,  that  the  description  of  lo's  wan- 
derings (in  the  ode,  vv.  525,  sq.)  is  a  foretaste  of  the  much 
fuller  treatment  of  the  same  subject  in  the  later  Prometheus. 

fl-firret  S1  a<r<pa\es  ovS"  M  v<artf, 

Kopv<p5.  Albs  «t  Kpavdrj  irpa.y/.ia  Tf\flov. 

Sav\ol  yap  irpaTriScav 

SdffKtoi  re  reivovffiv  tropot, 

^j,TtSe7v  &<ppa.ffTOi. 

Idirrft  8'  e  \irlSiav 

cup'  vfyiirupyuv  Tru.v<a\eis  fipo-rovs, 


TOV  Hiroivov  Samovlwv  ijuevov  &vu  tppotrrifid  irws 
avr60ev  t£f-Koa£(V  (pirns,  eSpdvuv  ty  ayvwv. 
And  vv.  590,  sq.  : 

Til/  Uv  OewV  fvSlKUTtpOKTiV 

KfK\oifj.av  ev\.6yws  CJT'  <ipyois. 
irarijp  <pvrovpy6s,  avr6\etp  fii/a| 
ytvovs  ira\aio(ppo!V  peyas 


vir'  apxas  8'  O&TIVOS 

TO  (Hfiov  Kptiffff6va>v 

OVTIVOS  avwOfv  rjftevov  ire'^ei  Kara. 

•rdpeffTt  8*  fpyov  &s  eiros 

trrfvffai  Ti  -riav  f3ov\ios 

1  vv.  227-33,  and  v.  416. 

2  Thus  we  have  (w.  34,  sq.)  : 


virtp,  Pporrrj  ffTepoirfj  T* 
6:u.Ppo<popoiffiv  T'  avfpois  ayplas 
oXbj  cuiriicrcunfs  SA.OJKTO. 

Again,  v.  350  :  \vKoSluKrov  &s  Sd/j.a\iv  &/*  :?tTpa,.s 

aXifidrois,  Iv'1  oAKoE  -niffvvos  u.f/j.vKf 
<ppd£ov<ra  Porrjpt  fn6x^ovs. 

And 

6.x°P°v  o-KiQapiv  SaKpvoy6vov"Apr). 

And  the  wonderful  — 


CH.  xv.  THE  PERS^E.  253 

§  1 74.  The  Perste  is  profoundly  interesting,  apart  from  literary 
questions,  for  it  is  the  first  approach  to  a  piece  of  contem- 
porary history  among  the  Greeks.  Here  we  have  the  battle 
of  Salamis  described  by  an  eyewitness,  and  the  impressions 
made  on  the  heroes  of  Marathon  recorded  with  a  poet's 
utterance.1  The  problem  of  making  an  ideal  picture  from 
materials  of  the  present  day  was  more  imperative  for  a  Greek 
than  for  any  modern  poet,  and  it  is  with  no  small  acuteness 
that  Racine  (in  the  preface  to  his  Bajazei]  explains  the  artifice, 
and  applies  it  in  his  own  way.  As  M.  Patin  well  puts  it :  '  il 
depaysa,  en  quelque  sorte,  son  sujet,  et  lui  donna  cette  per- 
spective fointaine  necessaire  a  1'illusion  tragique."  Racine 
thought  that  to  his  audience  the  Turks  were  strange  and  mys- 
terious enough  for  ideal  purposes  just  as  ^Eschylus  had  de- 
vised the  plan  of  laying  his  scene  at  the  Persian  court,  where 
even  living  characters  would  not  strike  the  audience  as  too 
close  to  themselves.  By  this  means  ^Eschylus  avoids  all  the 
difficulties  which  beset  him,  and  moreover  was  able  to  convey 
certain  moral  lessons  to  his  audience  by  his  picture  of  the . 
despotic  society  in  which  Xerxes  lived.  It  has  been  re- 
marked that  though  the  play  teems  with  Persian  names,  not 
a  single  Athenian  is  mentioned ;  nay,  even  the  celebrated 
Ameinias,  whom  many  commentators  call  the  poet's  brother,  is 
anonymous,  and  his  ship  only  noted  as  a  '  Greek  ship.' 3  Of 
course,  the  mention  of  any  special  name  in  the  Attic  theatre 
would  have  excited  all  manner  of  disturbing  sympathies  and 
antipathies. 

The  general  features  of  the  play  being  borrowed,  as  we  are 
told,  from  the  celebrated  Phoenisscs  of  Phrynichus,  it  was  of 
that  archaic  and  simple  structure  which  admitted  almost  no 

1  The  differences  between  ^Eschylus  and  Herodotus,  which  are  less 
than  might  be  expected,  have  often  been  discussed  by  critics.  Cf. 
Blakesley's  Herod,  vol.  ii.  p.  404.  The  introduction  of  modern  subjects 
had  already  been  attempted  by  Phrynichus  (above,  p.  236),  not  only  in 
his  Capture  of  Miletus,  but  in  his  Phcenissce.  It  was  again  attempted  in 
later  days  by  Moschion  and  Philiscus  in  their  Themistocles,  and  probably 
by  others  also.  Cf.  Meineke,  Hist.  Com.  Grccc.  p.  522. 

•  Cf.  Patin,  Tragiqites grecs.  i.  p.  21 1.  *  v.  409. 


254  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

action,  and  very  little  play  of  various  feeling.  The  chorus  is 
here  also  of  the  first  importance,  and  takes  its  place  as  an  actor 
in  the  play.  It  is  composed  of  elders  left  in  charge  of  Xerxes' 
kingdom  during  his  absence,  who  in  the  opening  scene  express 
their  anxieties  concerning  the  state  of  the  Persian  Empire. 
Atossa,  the  king's  mother,  next  appears  to  tell  her  alarms,  and 
then  a  breathless  messenger  narrates  the  defeat  and  destruction 
of  the  great  host  in  a  very  splendid  narrative.  The  chorus,  in 
despair,  are  advised  by  Atossa  to  help  her  in  calling  up  the  spirit 
of  Darius,  who  is  represented  as  a  great  and  just  ruler,  whose 
prophetic  advice  might  still  save  his  people.  But  he  merely 
foretells,  with  calm  dignity,  the  remaining  defeat  at  Platasa,  and 
gives  no  hope  of  returning  fortune.  After  a  choral  song  in 
praise  of  his  great  conquests,  Xerxes  appears  in  strong  con- 
trast, and  the  play  ends  with  a  long  commas  or  ode  of  lamenta- 
tion for  him  and  the  chorus — a  common  feature  at  the  close 
of  Greek  tragedies,  for  which  we  moderns  feel  little  sympathy. 
The  play  is  not  very  difficult,  and  the  text  in  a  much  better 
condition  than  that  of  most  of  ^Eschylus'  other  plays.  Its  merits 
have  been  generally  underrated,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  left 
for  M.  Patin  to  discover,  with  the  delicate  sense  of  his  nation, 
the  finer  points  missed  by  other  critics.  The  ghost  of  Darius  in 
particular  is  to  be  noted  as,  perhaps,  the  only  character  ghost  in 
the  history  of  tragedy.  He  is  brought  up  mainly  to  enable  the 
poet  to  gather  together  the  various  triumphs  of  the  Greeks, 
which  could  not  be  embraced  in  the  limits  of  the  action.  But 
far  beyond  this  particular  requirement,  ^Eschylus  has  endowed 
the  vision  of  the  great  monarch  with  a  certain  splendid  calm,  a 
repose  from  the  troubles  of  this  mortal  life,  an  indifference  to 
all  violent  despair,  which  comes  out  ctrangely  in  his  opening 
words  to  Atossa,  and  in  his  parting  farewell.1  The  con- 
trast with  the  erring,  suffering,  perturbed  spirit  of  Hamlet's 
father  will  strike  every  reader.  As  for  the  other  charac- 
ters of  the  play,  they  merely  exhibit  various  phases  of  grief, 
all  modulated  and  varied  according  to  the  natural  require- 
ments of  the  persons.  The  grief  of  the  messenger  is  patri- 
otic, he  thinks  of  the  losses  of  Persia  only ;  and  yet  there 
1  vv.  706-8,  and  840-2. 


CH.  xv.          CHE  SEVEN  AGAINST  THEBES.  255 

is  in  him  that  fullness  and  explicitness  of  detail  which  mark 
the  self-importance  of  a  man  of  little  dignity,  when  he  be- 
comes the  bearer  of  weighty,  even  though  lamentable,  news. 
The  grief  of  the  queen  is  personal,  she  has  her  mind  fixed 
on  her  son.  That  of  the  chorus  is  vehement  and  headstrong, 
almost  seditious  ;  that  of  Xerxes,  gloomy  and  despairing  ;  that 
of  Darius,  as  we  have  said,  is  a  calm  and  divine  melancholy, 
which  cannot  disturb  his  eternal  serenity.  Thus  a  single 
theme  is  varied  through  all  manner  of  tempers.  Though  the 
general  merit  of  the  piece  is  greater  than  that  of  the  Supplices, 
there  are  not  so  many  fine  and  striking  passages.  More  espe- 
cially the  theology  preached  by  Darius  is  by  no  means  so  lofty 
as  that  cited  above  from  the  earlier  play.  The  lines  in  which 
Atossa  describes  the  offerings  of  the  dead  are  very  beautiful, 
and  very  like  in  grace  to  the  writing  of  Sophocles.1 

The  invocation  of  Darius  also  shows  the  use  of  the  refrain, 
which  is  so  effective  in  ^Eschylus,  and  is  not  common  in  the 
other  tragedians.  We  are  told  in  the  didascaliae  that  this  trilogy 
—  viz.  the  Phineus,  Perscc,  Glaucus,  with  the  Prometheus  Pyrphoros 
•  —  gained  the  first  prize.  Of  the  other  plays  we  know  hardly 
anything,  save  that  the  Boeotian  campaign,  and  the  Carthaginian 
defeat  in  Sicily,  seem  to  have  been  treated  in  them. 

§  175.  The  Seven  against  Thebes  brings  us  to  a  more  ad- 
vanced stage  of  the  poet's  development.  Though  the  plot 
is  still  simple,  it  is  not  the  chorus,  but  Eteocles  who  opens 
the  play,  and  sustains  the  principal  part.  Moreover,  the  drawing 
of  his  character  is  very  clear  and  sharp,  and  quite  as  striking 
as  the  warlike  characters  of  the  most  developed  tragedies. 
After  his  patriotic  speech,  a  messenger  details,  with  great 

1  vv.  610-18  : 


jSods  r'  cup'  ayvris  \fvicbi>  etiiroTOV  yd\a, 
TTJS  T"  avdffjLovpyov  ffrdyfia,  ira/u$aes  yiteAi, 
\i0dcrn'  i>5pri\ais  iraoQevov  irrjyrjs  fJ.fra 
ax-fiparSv  re  /j.riTpbs  aypias  &TTO 
TOTbv  TraXaias  a/j.ir€\ov  ydvos  rd&e  • 
rrjs  T  alev  tv  (f>v\\oiffi  6a\\ova"ris  "iffov 
£avdris  e'Aaias  icapirbs  fvcjSrjs  irdpa, 
&v9rj  re  ir\fKTa,  irafi<t)6pov  yaia*  reKva.. 


256  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xv. 

beauty,  the  sacrifice  and  oath  of  the  seven  hostile  chiefs,  who 
swear  to  meet  death  rather  than  to  turn  back  from  Thebes.1 
The  parados  of  the  chorus  is  composed  with  great  skill,  the  pre- 
cipitous hurried  rythms  and  apparent  disorder  of  the  structure 
speaking  clearly  the  agitation  of  the  Theban  maidens  at  the 
approach  of  the  enemy.  Eteocles  breaks  in  upon  them,  and 
reproves  them  sharply  for  disturbing  the  town,  and  dispiriting 
the  citizens  with  their  lamentations,  and  prayers  to  the  gods. 
After  a  long  dialogue,  he  exhorts  them  to  raise  a  paean  to  the 
gods,  and  encourage  the  people.  But  the  chorus,  in  an 
anxious  and  very  beautiful  strain,  still  harp  upon  their  fears, 
upon  the  horrors  of  war,  and  upon  the  miseries  of  captured 
cities/2 

1  He  addo  a  pathetic  touch  : 

ftvrifj.e'ia,  &1  avruv  rots  TfKovffiv  £s  86/j.ovs 
•jrpbs  ap/jC  'ASpdffrov  \(p<rlv  fffTf<pot>, 
XtifiovTfs'  olKToi  8'  ovtitls  ?fv  Sii  <rr6ua. 
*  w.  321-62  : 

oiKTpbv  "yip  ir6\iv  £8"  ayvyiav 

'AfSo;  irpo'idtycu,  Sophs  &ypav, 

Sov\iav  tyatyapa  cnroSa! 

uir'  avSpbs  'Axatov  Be66ev 

irepQofj.fi'a.v  arifjuas, 

ras  8e  Kf)(eipa>nfva.s  &yfffdai, 

€•(1,  veas  re  ical  iraXaias 


/3oa  8" 

\cii8os  6\\vfnev 

Papfias  TOI 

KKavr'bv  8'  apTiTp6irois  u 

vojj.ip.tav  irpOTrdpoi6ev  Sia/ 

tiupdruv  ffrvyep&v  6$6v. 

T(  ;  rbv  <p9ifj.fvov  yap  irp 

/SeArepa  TwvSe  irpdcrffetv. 

iro\\a  ydp,  edre  irTo\ 


&\Xos  8'  &XXov 
4>ovevti,  -rh  8e  Kal  irvptpopft- 
navvy  xpo'VeTOt  ir6\i<rfji'  airav. 
8'  fiwrvei  Aoo5a/xar 


CH.  xv.         THE  SEVEN  AGAINST  THEBES.  257 

Then  follows  the  celebrated  scene  in  which  the  messenger 
describes  the  appearance  of  each  chief,  while  Eteocles  and 
the  chorus  answer.  The  length  to  which  it  is  expanded 
has  been  criticised  by  Euripides.  The  picture  of  the  sixth, 
the  seer  Amphiaraus,1  is  said  by  Plutarch  to  have  'brought 
down  the  house'  by  its  plain  allusion  to  Aristeides,  then  in 
the  theatre.  When  Polynices  is  described,  last  of  all,  the 
rage  of  Eteocles  bursts  forth  uncontrollably,  and  the  awful 
curse  resting  upon  the  house  of  Laius  urges  him  consciously  to 
meet  his  brother  in  the  field,  in  spite  of  the  deprecating 
entreaties  of  the  chorus.  After  an  ode  on  the  sorrows  of 
CEdipus,  the  news  of  the  Theban  victory  and  the  death  of  the 
brothers  arrives.  Presently  the  bodies  are  brought  in,  fol- 
lowed by  Antigone  and  Ismene,  who  sing  a  commas  over  them, 
consisting  of  doleful  reproaches  and  laments. 

But  in  the  last  seventy  lines  the  poet  blocks  out  the  whole 
subject  of  Sophocles'  Antigone.  The  herald  forbids  the  burial  of 
Polynices,  Antigone  rebels,  and  by  a  curious  device  the  chorus, 
dividing,  take  sides  with  both  Antigone  and  Ismene,  in  upholding 


fj.ta.ifui>  evffeBfi 
KopKopvycu  8'  ai/'  &CTTV, 
irorl  irroXtv  8'  dpicdva,  irvpySj-ris. 
irpbs  avSpbs  8'  ct»'7)p  Sopl  Kaiverai 
'  alfJLar6ecrcrai 


&pri  /3pf<piav  ftpffiovrai. 
apirayal  Se  5iaSpo/j.av  ofiaiftoves' 
fu/ti/3oAe7  fycptav  tpepovTt, 
Kal  Kevbs  Kfvbv  KaXfl, 
tyvvofjiov  Qt\iav  fxelv> 
ofae  ij.fiov  otir'  tffov  \f\ifi./j.fisoi. 
riv  (K  ratvS'  dKo.ffa.1  Xoyos  irapa.  ; 
TravToSairbs  Se  Kapirbs 
Xa.fj.d8is  ireff&v  a,\yvvet  Kvp4\ffa.s. 
•rciKpbv  8'  op.fj.0.  T!J>V  da.\aiJ.i]ir6\<av 
iroAAa  8'  aKpir^cpvprox 
yas  S6<n<i  ovTtSavo'is 
^r  podiois  ipopfircu. 
1  w.  592-4- 


2$8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.      CH.  XV. 

and  rejecting  the  decree  of  the  city.1  M.  Patin  notes  that  the 
same  device  has  been  adopted  by  Schiller  in  his  Bride  of 
Messina,  and  that  such  a  division  was  not  at  all  unnatural  in  a 
Greek  chorus.  Far  from  being  an  ideal  spectator,  '  les  poetes 
grecs  ne  se  piquaient  pas  de  donner  au  chceur,  represent- 
ant  de  la  foule,  des  sentiments  heroi'ques,  et  il  me  semble 
qu'Eschyle,  dans  cette  peinture  rapide,  a  fort  inge'nieusement 
caracte'rise  les  commodes  apologies  de  la  poltronnerie  politique.' 

Aristophanes,  in  his  Frogs,  makes  ^Eschylus  quote  this  play 
specially  for  its  warlike  tone,  and  for  the  good  effects  it  pro- 
duced upon  the  spirit  of  the  spectators.  It  won  the  first  prize 
with  its  trilogy,  consisting  of  the  Laius,  the  GLdipus,  the 
Septem,  and  as  a  satyric  afterpiece,  the  Sphinx.  This  information 
having  been  copied  from  the  Medicean  didascalise  discovered  in 
1828,  it  is  interesting  to  study  the  earlier  lucubrations  of  the 
Germans  as  to  the  place  of  the  Septem  in  its  trilogy.  Only  one 
of  their  guesses  was  true,  and  that  was  shortly  abandoned  by 
its  author,  Hermann,  for  more  elaborate  hypotheses.  This 
collapse  of  the  learned  combinations  about  the  grouping  of 
Greek  plays  has  decided  me  to  pass  them  by  in  silence,  merely 
giving  the  facts  when  preserved  in  the  Greek  prefacesj  which 
are  acknowledged  trustworthy. 

§  176.  The  Prometheus  Vinctus  brings  us  to  the  perfection 
of  yEschylus'  art,  and  to  a  specimen,  unique  and  unapproach- 
able, of  what  that  wonderful  genius  could  do  in  simple  tragedy, 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  old  plotless,  motionless,  surpriseless 
drama,  made  up  of  speeches  and  nothing  more.  There  is  cer- 
tainly no  other  play  of  ^Eschylus  which  has  produced  a  greater 
impression  upon  the  world,  and  few  remnants  of  Greek 
literature  are  to  be  compared  with  it  in  its  eternal  freshness 
and  its  eternal  mystery.  We  know  nothing  of  the  plays 
connected  with  it,  save  that  it  was  followed  by  a  Prometheus 
Unbound,  with  a  chorus  of  Titans  condoling  with  the  god, 
who  was  delivered  by  Heracles  from  the  vulture  that  gnawed 
his  vitals,  and  was  reconciled  with  Zeus.  Thus  this  group  may 

1  So  Aristophanes,  in  his  Acharnians  (vv.  520,  sq.)  divides  his  chorus, 
half  of  which  is  persuaded  by  Dicaeopolis,  while  the  other  half  remains 
obstinate  and  hostile- 


CH.  xv.  THE  PROMETHEUS.  259 

have  had  a  peaceful  and  happy  termination,  like  the  great 
extant  trilogy;  and  we  can  fancy  that  the  pious  yEschylus, 
when  he  brought  upon  the  stage  conflicts  among  the  gods, 
would  not  allow  his  plays  to  close  in  wrath  and  anguish,  as  he 
did  the  CEdipodean  trilogy  just  discussed.  The  work  before 
us  shows  clear  marks  of  development  above  the  earlier  plays. 
Three  actors  appear  in  the  first  scene,  the  silent  figure  of 
Prometheus  being  evidently  a  lay  figure,  from  behind  which 
the  actor  afterwards  spoke.  The  chorus  is  even  more  re- 
stricted than  in  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  and  occupies  a  posi- 
tion not  more  prominent  than  in  the  average  plays  of  Sophocles 
or  Euripides.  The  dialogue  is  paramount,  and  possesses  a 
terseness  and  power  not  exceeded  by  any  of  the  poet's  later 
work.  As  Eteocles,  the  heroic  warrior,  is  in  the  Seven  the 
central  and  the  only  developed  character,  so  here  Prome- 
theus, the  heroic  sufferer,  sustains  the  whole  play.  In  the  first 
scene  he  is  riven,  with  taunt  and  insult,  to  the  rocks  by  the 
cruel  or  timid  servants  of  Zeus.  Then  he  soliloquises.  Then 
he  discourses  with  the  sympathetic  chorus  of  ocean  nymphs  and 
their  cautious  father.  Then  he  condoles  with  the  frantic  lo,  and 
prophesies  her  future  fates.  Lastly,  he  bids  defiance  to  Zeus, 
through  his  herald  Hermes,  and  disappears  amid  whirlwind  a-nd 
thunder.  Yet  the  interest  and  pathos  of  the  play  never  flag. 

With  a  very  usual  artifice  of  the  poet's,  satirised  by  Aristo- 
phanes, the  chief  actor  is  kept  upon  the  stage  silent  for  some 
time,  during  which  the  expectation  of  the  spectators  must 
have  been  greatly  excited,  even  though  diverted  by  the  ex- 
quisite pathos  of  Hephaestus'  address  to  the  suffering  god. 
The  outburst  of  Prometheus,  as  soon  as  the  insolent  minis- 
ters of  Zeus  have  left  him  manacled,  but  have  freed  him  from 
the  far  more  galling  shackles  of  proud  reserve,  is  among  the 
great  things  in  the  world's  poetry.  The  approach  of  the 
ocean  nymphs  is  picturesquely  conceived  :  indeed  the  whole 
scenery,  laid  in  the  Scythian  deserts  beyond  the  Euxine,  among 
gloomy  cliffs  and  caverns,  with  no  interests  upon  the  scene 
save  those  of  the  gods  and  their  colossal  conflicts,  is  weird  and 
wild  beyond  comparison.  The  choral  odes  are  not  so  fine  as  in 
the  earlier  plays,  but  the  dialogue  and  soliloquies  more  than  com- 


260  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

pensate  for  them.  The  play  is  probably  the  easiest  of  the  extant 
seven,  and  the  text  in  a  good  condition,  though  the  critics  sus- 
pect a  good  many  interpolations  made  by  actors  in  their  stage 
copies. 

§  177.  But  the  external  features  of  this  splendid  play  are 
obscured,  if  possible,  by  the  still  greater  interest  attaching  to  its 
intention,  and  by  the  great  difficulties  of  explaining  the  poet's 
attitude  when  he  brought  it  upon  the  stage.  For  it  represents 
a  conflict  among  the  immortal  gods — a  conflict  carried  out  by 
violence  and  settled  by  force  and  fraud,  not  by  justice.  Zeus 
especially,  his  herald,  and  his  subject  gods,  are  represented  as 
hard  and  fierce  characters,  maintaining  a  ruthless  tyranny  among 
the  immortals;  and  the  suffering  Prometheus  submits  to  centuries 
of  torture  from  motives  of  pure  benevolence  to  the  wretched 
race  of  men,  whom  he  had  civilised  and  instructed  against  the 
will  of  Zeus.  For  this  crime,  and  no  other,  is  he  punished  by 
the  Father  of  the  Gods,  thus  set  forth  as  the  arch  enemy  of  man. 

How  did  the  Athenian  audience,  who  vehemently  attacked 
the  poet  for  divulging  the  Mysteries,  tolerate  such  a  drama  ?  and 
Still  more,  how  did  ^Eschylus,  a  pious  and  serious  thinker,  venture 
to  bring  such  a  subject  on  the  stage  with  a  moral  purpose  ?  As 
to  the  former  question,  we  know  that  in  all  traditional  religions, 
many  old  things  survive  which  shock  the  moral  sense  of  more 
developed  ages,  and  which  are  yet  tolerated  even  in  public 
services,  being  hallowed  by  age  and  their  better  surroundings. 
So  we  can  imagine  that  any  tragic  poet,  who  adhered  to  the  facts 
of  a  received  myth,  would  be  allowed  to  draw  his  characters  in 
accordance  with  it,  especially  as  these  characters  were  not 
regarded  as  fixed,  but  only  held  good  for  the  single  piece.  In 
the  Middle  Ages  much  license  was  allowed  in  the  mystery  plays, 
but  it  was  condoned  and  connived  at  because  of  the  general 
religiousness  of  the  practice,  and  because  the  main  outlines  of 
biblical  story  were  the  frame  for  these  vagaries.  Thus  a  very 
extreme  distortion  of  their  gods  will  not  offend  many  who 
would  feel  outraged  at  any  open  denial  of  them.  It  is  also  to 
be  remembered  that  despotic  sovereignty  was  the  Greek's  ideal 
of  happiness  for  himse/f,  and  that  most  nations  have  thought  it 
not  only  reconcileable  with,  but  conformable  to,  the  dignity  of 


CH.  xv.  THE  PROMETHEUS.  261 

the  great  Father  who  rules  the  world.  No  Athenian,  however 
he  sympathised  with  Prometheus,  would  think  of  blaming  Zeus 
for  asserting  his  power  and  crushing  all  resistance  to  his  will. 
I  do  not  therefore  think  it  difficult  to  understand  how  the 
Athenians  not  only  tolerated  but  appreciated  the  play. 

The  question  of  the  poet's  intention  is  far  more  difficult, 
and  will  probably  never  be  satisfactorily  answered.  The  number 
of  interpretations  put  upon  the  myth  by  commentators  is  as- 
tonishing, and  yet  it  is  possible  that  the  poet  had  none  of  them 
consciously  before  his  mind's  eye.  They  have  been  well 
summed  up  by  Patin1  under  six  heads.  There  are  first  the 
historical  theories,  such  as  that  of  Diodorus  Siculus,  a  scholiast 
of  Apollonius  Rhodius,  and  others,  that  make  Prometheus  a 
ruler  of  Egypt  or  of  Scythia,  who  suffered,  in  his  struggles  to 
reclaim  his  country  and  its  people.  Secondly,  the  philo- 
sophical, which  hold  it  to  be  the  image  of  the  struggles  and 
trials  of  humanity  against  natural  obstacles.  This  seerns  the 
view  of  Welcker,  and  is  certainly  that  of  M.  Guignaut.  Thirdly, 
the  moral,  which  place  the  struggle  within  the  breast  of  the 
individual,  and  against  his  passions,  as  was  done  by  Bacon,  by 
Calderon,  and  also  by  Schlegel,  as  well  as  by  several  oldei 
French  critics.  Fourthly,  the  Christian,  much  favoured  by 
Catholic  divines  in  France,  supported  by  Jos.  de  Maistre, 
Edgar  Quinet,  Ch.  Maquin,  and  others,  who  see  in  the  story 
either  the  redemption  of  man,  the  fall  of  Satan,  or  the  fall  oi 
man,  dimly  echoed  by  some  tradition  from  the  sacred  Scriptures. 
Garbitius,  a  Basle  editor  of  the  Prometheus  in  1559,  seems 
to  have  led  the  way  in  this  direction.  But  as  Lord  Lytton 
justly  observes,  'whatever  theological  system  it  shadows  forth 
was  rather  the  gigantic  conception  of  the  poet  himself  than  the 
imperfect  revival  of  any  forgotten  creed,  or  the  poetical  dis- 
guise of  any  existing  philosophy.'  Yet  there  is  certainly  some- 
thing of  disbelief  or  defiance  of  the  creed  of  the  populace. 
Fifthly,  the  scientific,  which  regard  it  as  a  mere  personification 
of  astronomical  facts,  as  is  the  fashion  with  comparative 
mythologies.  Similar  attempts  seem  to  have  been  made  of  old 
by  the  alchemists.  Sixthly,  there  is  the  political  interpretation 
1  Etudes,  i.  p.  254.  I  have  added  Mr.  Lloyd's,  from  his  Age  of  Pericles. 


262  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

of  Mr,  Watkiss  Lloyd,  who  thinks  the  genius  of  Themistocles 
and  the  ingratitude  of  Athens  were  the  real  object  of  the  poet's 
teaching,  though  disguised  in  a  myth. l  There  is  lastly*  to  be 
noticed  an  unique  theory,  which  may  be  called  the  romantic, 
propounded  by  Desinaretz  in  1648,  when  he  published  a 
rationalistic  imitation  of  Euemerus,  entitled  La  Verite  des 
fables  ou  Ihistoire  des  dieux  de  r antiquit'e.  He  explains  how 
Prometheus  betrays  his  sovereign,  Jupiter,  for  the  love  of  his 
mistress  Pandora,  a  lady  as  exacting  as  any  princess  of  chi- 
valry. He  retires  in  despair  to  the  wastes  of  the  Caucasus, 
where  remorse  daily  gnaws  his  heart,  and  he  suffers  agonies 
more  dreadful  than  if  an  eagle  were  continually  devouring  his 
entrails.  Prometheus  at  the  French  court  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  sure  to  cut  a  strange  figure. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  an  acquaintance  with  the 
Orphic  and  Eleusinian  mysteries  told  upon  yEschylus'  theology, 
and  made  him  regard  the  conflicts  and  sufferings  of  gods  as 
part  of  their  revelation  to  men,  and  we  can  imagine  him 
accepting  even  the  harshest  and  most  uncivilised  myths  as  part 
of  the  established  faith,  and  therefore  in  some  way  to  be 
harmonised  with  the  highest  morals.  Yet  it  seems  very  strange 
that  he  should  represent  Zeus  as  a  tyrant,  and  Prometheus — a 
god  not  by  any  means  of  importance  in  public  worship — a 
noble  sufferer,  punished  for  his  humanity.  Still  worse,  Zeus  is 
represented  as  the  enemy  of  men,  and  completely  estranged 
from  any  interest  in  their  welfare.  I  do  not  know  how  these 
things  are  to  be  explained  in  such  a  man  as  .YEschylus.  and 
cannot  say  which  of  the  more  reasonable  theories  is  to  be 
preferred.  This  seems  certain,  that  the  iron  power  of  Destiny 
was  an  extremely  prominent  idea  in  his  mind,  and  that  no 
more  wonderful  illustration  could  be  found  than  this  story,  in 
which  even  the  Ruler  of  the  Gods  was  subject  to  it,  and  thus  at 
the  mercy  of  his  vanquished  but  prophetic  foe. 

§  1 78.  The  history  of  opinion  about  the  Prometheus  is  some- 
what curious.  The  great  French  critics  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury could  not  comprehend  it,  and  Voltaire,  Fontenelle,  and  la 
Harpe  were  agreed  that  it  was  simply  a  monstrous  play,  and  the 
1  Cf.  Bernhardy's  Comm.  on  most  of  these  theories,  LG.  iii.  p.  272,  sq. 


CH.  xv.  ITS  LASTING  INFLUENCE.  263 

work  of  an  uncultivated  boor  with  some  sparks  of  genius.  The 
colossal  conceptions  of  the  great  Greek,  and  the  gigantic  words 
with  which  he  strove  to  compass  his  thought,  were  essentially 
foreign  to  the  rigid  form  and  smooth  polish  of  the  French 
tragedians.  Of  late  years  all  this  feeling  has  changed. 
Lemercier,  Andrieux,  and  Edgar  Quinet1  have  adopted  the 
tone  of  Schlegel  and  Goethe,  and  everybody  is  now  agreed  as  to 
the  merit  of  the  play.  I  would  they  were  equally  persuaded 
of  the  impossibility  of  imitating  it  There  are  allusions  to  two 
translations  or  adaptations  by  the  Romans,  attributed  to  Attius, 
Varro,  or  Msecenas.  Cicero  seems  to  have  been  particularly 
attracted  by  it.  In  modern  days  Calderon's  Estatuta  dt 
Prometheo  is  said  to  be  a  moral  allegory  on  the  conflicts  in 
human  nature.  Milton's  Satan  is  full  of  recollections  of  Pro- 
metheus, and  even  the  Samson  Agonistes,  though  rather  built 
on  an  Euripidean  model,  has  many  like  traits.  Byron  tells  us 
that  this  was  his  great  model  for  all  the  rebellious  heroes  who 
conflict  with  the  course  of  Providence.  Shelley  so  loved  to 
depict  the  struggle  with  a  tyrannous  deity  that  he  reconstructed 
for  us  the  Prometheus  Unbound  on  his  own  model.  But  as  Lord 
Lytton  observes,  ^Eschylus'  power  lies  in  concentration, 
whereas  the  quality  of  Shelley  is  diffuseness.  Keats'  Hyperion 
shows  the  impress  of  the  same  original.  Goethe  attempted, 
but  never  finished  a  Prometheus.  Apart  from  the  unworthj 
portraits  in  the  Pandora  of  Voltaire  and  the  Prometheus  01 
Lefranc  de  Pompignan,  E.  Quinet  has  symbolised  the  fall  of 
paganism  and  rise  of  Christianity  in  his  drama  (Paris,  1838), 
and  several  later  French  poets,  MM.  Lodin  de  Lalaire,  V.  de 
Laprade,  and  Senneville,  have  touched  the  subject — the  latter 
in  a  tragedy  on  Prometheus  Delivered '(1844).  Thus  we  have 
before  us  in  this  play  of  ^Eschylus  one  of  the  greatest  and 
most  lasting  creations  in  human  art,  a  model  to  succeeding 
ages,  and  commanding  their  homage.  But  no  modern  in- 

1  I  am  surprised  to  find  in  Villemain  (Lilt,  du  xviii™  sttcle,  iii.  299) 
the  expression  :  '  piece  monstrueuse,  ou  Ton  voit  arriver  1' Ocean  qui  vole, 
porte  sur  un  animal  aile,  et  d'autres  folies  poetiques  de  1'imagination 
grecque.'  This  is  a  curious  sentence  for  so  enlightened  and  elegant  a 
critic. 


264  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xv. 

terpreter  has  ever  equalled  the  mighty  original.  As  M.  Patin 
says,  it  is  owing  to  the  unequal  satisfaction  provided  for  two 
very  diverse  requirements — a  combination  of  great  poetic 
clearness  with  a  religious  and  philosophic  twilight — that  the 
work  of  ^Eschylus  preserves  its  immortal  freshness.  There 
are  German  translations  by  Hartung  and  F.  Jacobs.  All  earlier 
English  versions  may  be  forgotten  in  the  presence  of  that  of 
Mrs.  Browning. 

§  179.  We  now  arrive  at  the  Oresteta,  the  three  plays  on  the 
fortunes  of  the  house  of  Atreus,  which  were  vEschylus'  last  and 
greatest  work.  These  plays,  the  Agamemnon,  Choephori,  and 
Eumenides,  are  the  only  extant  specimen  of  a  trilogy,  and 
are  inestimable  in  showing  us  the  way  in  which  the  older  tragic 
p'oets  combined  three  plays  on  a  single  subject.  But  unfor- 
tunately our  single  specimen  is  quite  insufficient  to  afford  us 
materials  for  an  established  theory. 

The  first  of  the  series,  the  Agamemnon,  is  the  longest  and 
the  greatest  play  left  us  by  ^Eschylus,  and,  in  my  opinion,  the 
greatest  of  the  Greek  tragedies  we  know.  There  is  still  no 
complication  in  the  plot ;  the  scenes  follow  one  another  in 
simple  and  natural  order  ;  but  the  splendid  and  consistent 
drawing  of  the  characters,  the  deep  philosophy  of  the  choral 
songs,  and  the  general  grandeur  and  gloom  which  pervade  the 
whole  piece,  raise  it  above  all  that  his  successors  were  able  to 
achieve.  The  central  point  of  interest  is  the  matchless  scene  be- 
tween Cassandra  and  the  chorus — a  scene  which  drew  even  from 
the  writer  of  the  dry  didascaliae  an  expression  of  the  universal  ad- 
miration it  produced.  The  play  opens  with  a  night  view  of 
the  palace  at  Argos,  from  the  roof  of  which  a  watchman,  in  a 
most  picturesque  prologue  of  a  homely  type,  details  the  long 
weariness  of  his  watch,  and  betrays  in  vague  hints  the  secret 
sores  that  fester  within  the  house.  But  his  soliloquy  is  broken 
by  a  shout  at  the  sudden  flashing  out  of  the  long-expected 
beacon-light  that  heralded  the  fall  of  Troy.  Then  follows  a 
long  and  difficult  chorus  which  reviews  all  the  course  of  the 
Trojan  war,  the  omen  of  the  eagles,  the  prophecies  of  Calchas, 
and  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigeneia.  The  hymn  marches  on  in  its 
course,  each  member  closing  with  the  solemn  refrain  aiXu-ov 


CH.  xv.  THE  AGAMEMNON.  265 


aiXivov  £<7Tf,  ro  &'  EV  viKaTb).  The  moral  views  of  God  and  of 
his  Providence  are  very  pure  and  great,  and  remind  us  of  the 
passages  above  quoted  from  the  Supplices.1 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  step  by  step  the  plot  of  a  play 
so  easily  read  in  good  translations.  The  character  of  Cly- 
temnestra  is  boldly  and  finely  drawn.  She  is  evidently  the 
master  spirit  of  the  palace,  and  seems  stronger,  not  only 
than  .^Egisthus,  but  than  Agamemnon,  who  does  not  awake 
in  us  much  interest.  Cassandra  is  of  course  a  character  of 
situation,  but  is  remarkable  as  the  pure  creation  of  the  poet, 
and  not  suggested  by  the  old  forms  of  the  myth.  Her  pro- 
phetic frenzy,  her  attempts  to  speak  plainly  to  the  sympathetic 
chorus,  her  ultimate  clearness,  and  noble  despair  as  she 
casts  away  the  fillets  of  the  god  and  enters  the  house  of 
her  doom  —  all  combine  to  form  a  scene  without  parallel  in  the 
Greek  drama,  and  which  has  never  been  approached  by  the 
highest  effort  of  either  Sophocles  or  Euripides.  But  the  play 
not  only  stands  out  alone  for  dramatic  greatness  ;  it  abounds 
everywhere  in  picturesqueness  —  in  picturesqueness  of  descrip- 

1  Zevs,  OCTTIS  TTOT'  ftrrlv,  d  T(!5'  av- 


TOVTO 
OVK  t% 


ir\T]V  Aws,  ei  rb  /j-drav  airb  (ppovriSos  &x_6os 

Xpy  ^oAe?f  err]Ti>/j.(as. 

ov5'  offrts  irdpotBev  -f\v  fieyas, 


ovSfv  &i/  Ae'|ai  irplv  iav, 

&s  8'  eTreir'  t(pv,  rpia- 

Krrjpos  oifxerai  Tvyjav. 

Zrjva  8e  ns  Trpo<ppovws  firiv'iKia 

Teu£frai  (ppfvwv  rb  trciv  ' 

rbv  fppove'ii'  fiporovs  6Su- 

ffavra,  rbv  TrdQet  /j.ddos 

Otvra  Kvpius  txetv- 

ffrd^ei  5'  4v  0'  virvffi  irpb  KapSias 

fiVT]crnrrifJ.iav  irovos'   Kcd  Trap   &• 


oz'  Se  TTOU 
fitaias  <Tf\/j.a  ffe(j 
VOL.  I.  —  12 


266  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

tion,  as  in  the  speeches  of  the  watchman  and  the  herald 
Talthybius  ;  in  picturesqueness  of  lyric  utterance,  as  in  the 
famous  chorus  on  the  flight  of  Helen,  and  the  anguish  of  the 
deserted  Menelaus.1  Most  striking  also  is  the  picture  of  the 
treacherous  beauty  under  the  image  of  a  lion's  whelp,  brought 
up  and  petted  in  the  house,  and  suddenly  turning  to  its  native 
fierceness.2 

1  uyovffd  T'  avri<pfpvov  'l\ii 

/3ef3aKfv  pifJLfya.  Sia  Ttv\av, 
OTA.TJTO  r\a(ra  •  iro\\a  5'  H 


lOa  lii  Swua  Stafna  Kal  irp6/j.oi, 
lu  \fx°5  Ka-l  ffrl&oi  (pi\dvope 
Trdpeffri  fftyaff',  &rifj.os,  aAoiS 


oitrros 

Tr66cf  S'  virepwovrlas 

<pd<rfj.a 


ofjL/j.druv  8'  iv  o-x^vious  fppei  iraa'  ' 
ovtip6<paVTOi  Sf  TTfvO-rifj.oi'es 
irdpftfftv  SoKal  tpfpovffai  x°LPlv  MOTOi'tty. 
-udrav  yap  elr'  &j/  (crd\d  ns  Soiciav  6pav, 
a  Sia,     e&v> 


ir-rfpols  oiraSoIs  virvov  Kf\tv6ois. 
TO  fj.fv  /COT'  oVuovs  ^'  etrrtas  &XT) 
raS'  tffrl  Kal  TtSi/8'  virfpfiaTiArepa. 
rb  TTO.V  8'  d^>'  'EAAaSos  alas  ffvvopfj.evois 
irevOfia  TAr/tri/capSios 
$6fuav  e/cdcTTOu  irpeirei. 
iroAAa  yaw  Oiyydvei  irpbs  ^trap' 
ot>s  i±tv  yap  ns  firf/j.tyfj> 
olSev   avrl  8e  <pa>Twv 
Tfvxn  Kal  ffiroSbs  tls  fKaffrov  S6fj.ovs 
6  xpv°'a/u-olftbs  8"  'Apijs  fftafj-drtav 
Kal  TaAaj'ToOxoy  eV  fJ-dxy  Sophs 
irvpcadev  e£  'I\fou 
fy(\oiffi  Tre'wTrei  fiapv 
\l/rjy/j.a  SvffSaxpvTOv  a.v- 
Ti]vopos  cnroSoO  ye/j.1- 
fav  \f0i}ras  evOerov. 
8  vv.  735,  sq. 


CH.  xv.  THE  AGAMEMNON.  267 

There  is  one  passage  which  has  excited  much  criticism  con- 
cerning the  chorus.  When  the  voice  of  Agamemnon  is  heard 
within,  crying  that  he  is  fatally  wounded,  there  seems  to  be  a 
regular  deliberation  of  the  chorus,  each  member  offering  his 
opinion,  and  summed  up  by  the  leader  at  the  end  of  twenty- 
five  lines.  This  delay  seems  very  absurd,  except  we  have  re- 
course to  the  natural  solution,  that  the  various  members  of  the 
chorus  were  made  to  speak  simultaneously,  so  producing  a  con- 
fused sound  of  agitated  voices,  which  is  precisely  what  is  most 
dramatic  at  such  a  moment.  It  is  well  known  to  actors  now 
that  this  confused  talking  of  a  crowd  is  only  to  be  produced 
by  making  each  person  on  the  stage  say  something  definite 
at  the  same  moment ;  and  I  believe  ^Eschylus  to  have  here 
used  this  expedient.  Why  has  this  natural  explanation  oc- 
curred to  no  critic  ?  It  is  remarkable  how  the  chorus,  who 
even  after  the  murder  treat  Clytemnestra  with  respect,  and 
only  bewail  before  her  their  lost  king  in  bitter  grief,  start  up 
into  ungovernable  rage  when  the  craven  ^Egisthus  appears  to 
boast  of  his  success.  They  will  not  endure  from  him  one  word 
of  direction  ;  and  so  the  play  ends  with  the  entreaty  of  the  over- 
wrought queen  to  avoid  further  violence  on  this  awful  day. 

The  Agamemnon  suggested  the  subject  of  plays  to  Sophocles 
and  to  Ion  among  the  Greeks,  and  gave  rise  to  various  imita- 
tions among  the  early  Roman  tragedians,  as  well  as  by  Seneca. 
In  modern  days,  after  a  series  of  obscure  attempts  among  the 
French  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  it  was  imitated 
(in  1738)  by  Thompson,  in  a  play  which  was  translated  and 
produced  with  success  in  France.  It  was  also  imitated  by 
Alfieri  (1783),  and  then  in  1796  by  Lemercier  in  a  somewhat 
famous  version.  But  all  these  modern  Agamemnons  differ 
from  that  of  ^Eschylus  in  introducing  the  two  main  innova- 
tions of  modern  tragedy — an  interesting  plot  or  intrigue,  and  a 
careful  and  conscious  painting  of  human  passions.  The  great 
original  appeals  to  far  loftier  interests.  Thus  Alfieri  alto- 
gether disregards  and  omits  the  splendid  part  of  Cassandra, 
both  from  his  extreme  love  of  simplicity,  and  in  order  that  he  may 
find  room  for  painting  what  ^Eschylus  assumes  as  long  since 
determined — the  struggle  in  Clytemnestra's  mind  between 
passion,  duty,  vengeance,  and  honour.  This  development  of  the 


268  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

mental  conflicts  in  Clytemnestra  is  reproduced  by  Lemercier, 
who  has,  however,  not  made  the  error  of  omitting  Cassandra. 
But  the  Clytemnestra  of  ^Eschylus  has  been  for  years  tutored  by 
her  criminal  passion.  Her  struggles  with  duty  have  long  ceased, 
and  her  resolve  is  fixed.  This  is  no  mistake  is  psychology, 
no  passive  adherence  (as  M.  Villemain  thinks)  to  the  received 
legend,  but  a  well-known  mental  state  in  a  degraded  woman. 

Among  English  translations  I  may  specially  notice  the  ele- 
gant but  not  accurate  one  of  the  late  Dean  Milman,  in  a  volume 
already  often  cited  on  the  lyric  poets.  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  the  well- 
known  translator  of  Omar  Khayyam,  has  given  us  a  fine,  but 
free  and  modified  version  of  the  play  in  his  '  Agamemnon,  a 
tragedy  taken  from  the  Greek,'  most  of  which,  and  the  best  parts 
of  which,  are  literal  translations.  There  is  also  that  of  Pro- 
fessor Conington,  and  of  Miss  Swanwick,  which  latter  has  been 
published  in  a  magnificent  edition  with  Flaxman's  illustrations. 
Lastly,  Mr.  Robert  Browning  has  given  us  an  over-faithful 
version  from  his  matchless  hand — matchless,  I  conceive,  in 
conveying  the  deeper  spirit  of  the  Greek  poets.  But  in  this 
instance  he  has  outdone  his  original  in  ruggedness,  owing  to 
his  excess  of  conscience  as  a  translator. 

§  1 80.  The  Choephori,  so  called  from  the  chorus  carrying 
vessels  with  formal  offerings  for  Agamemnon,  which  follows,  is 
unfortunately  very  corrupt,  and  even  mutilated  at  its  opening  in 
our  MSS.  This,  as  well  as  the  intrinsic  sombreness  and  gloomy 
vagueness  of  the  play,  makes  it  probably  the  most  difficult  of 
our  tragedies  in  its  detail.  But  the  main  outline  is  very 
simple  and  massive.  The  scene  discloses  the  royal  portal,  and 
close  to  it  the  tomb  of  Agamemnon.  The  proximity  of  the 
tomb  to  the  palace  seems  merely  determined  by  stage  reasons, 
and  does  not  rest  in  any  sense  upon  a  tradition  that  Aga- 
memnon was  buried  in  his  citadel,  as  might  be  inferred  from 
Dr.  Schliemann's  conjectures.  Indeed,  the  whole  tradition  of 
Agamemnon's  being  buried  at  Mycenae  seems  unknown  to 
^Eschylus,  who  ignores  Diomede,  and  makes  the  seat  of  the 
great  empire  of  the  Atreidae  at  Argos. 

Orestes l  in  the  opening  scene  declares  his  return  to  Argos  to 

1  In  a  passage  criticised  for  its  redundant  language  by  Aristophanes  in 
the  Frogs. 


CH.  xv.  THE  CHOEPHORI.  269 

avenge  the  murder  of  his  father,  but  he  and  Pylades  stand  aside 
when  the  chorus  of  female  domestics  (probably  Trojans)  come 
out  in  solemn  procession  to  offer  libations  to  the  dead.  Here 
Orestes  sees  and  recognises  Electra,  who  discusses  with  the 
chorus  how  she  is  to  perform  the  commands  of  Clytemnestra, 
lately  terrified  by  an  ominous  dream.  They  then  find  the  lock  of 
hair  offered  at  the  tomb  by  Orestes,  and  his  foot-tracks,  by  which 
Electra  is  at  once  convinced  of  his  return.  It  is  evident  that 
yEschylus  laid  no  stress  on  the  recognition  scene,  and  that  any 
marks  sufficed  for  his  purpose.  But  he  has  naturally  not 
escaped  the  censure  of  Euripides,  who  ridicules  this  scene 
in  the  parallel  passage  of  his  Electra.  When  Orestes  discovers 
himself,  there  follows  a  splendid  dialogue  and  chorus,  I  had 
almost  said  duet  and  chorus,  in  which  the  children  of  Agamem- 
non and  their  friends  pray  for  help  and  favour  in  their  vengeance. 
This  scene  occupies  a  large  part  of  the  play.  At  its  close 
Orestes  tells  his  plan  of  coming  as  a  Phocian  stranger  and  an- 
nouncing his  own  death,  so  as  to  disarm  suspicion,  and  thus 
obtaining  access  to  the  palace.  Here  we  see  the  first  dawning 
of  a  plot,  or  of  that  complex  tragedy  which  soon  supplanted  the 
simpler  form.  The  chorus,  who  in  this  play  are  strictly  not  only 
the  confidants  but  accomplices  of  the  royal  children,  aid  in  the 
deception,  and  when  Orestes  has  been  invited  within  by  Clytem- 
nestra,  persuade  the  nurse,  who  is  sent  for  ^Egisthus,  to  disobey 
her  instructions,  and  desire  him  to  come  alone.  This  character 
(Kilissa),  with  her  homely  lament  over  Orestes,  and  her  memories 
of  the  vulgar  troubles  of  the  nursery,  gives  great  relief  to  the 
uniform  gloom  of  the  play,  and,  in  her  coarsely  expressed 
real  grief,  contrasts  well  with  the  stately  but  affected  lamentation 
of  the  queen.1  After  ^Egisthus  has  passed  in,  and  his  death- 
cry  has  been  heard,  comes  the  magnificent  scene  in  which  Cly- 
temnestra,  suddenly  acquainted  with  the  disaster,  calls  for  her 
double-axe,  but  is  instantly  confronted  by  her  son,  and  sees  her- 
self doomed  to  die.  There  is  here  not  an  idle  word,  not  a 
touch  of  surprise  or  inquiry.  She  sees  and  recognises  all  in  a 

1  Sophocles  seems  to  have  produced  a  similar  character  in  his  Niobe^ 
cf.  fr.  400 ;  and  this  nurse  was  translated  into  marble  in  the  famous  Niobe 
group,  of  which  we  see  a  Roman  copy  at  Florence. 


270  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XV. 

moment.  An  instant  of  weakness,  the  protest  of  Pylades.  a 
short,  hurried  dialogue  between  mother  and  son,  and  she  is 
brought  in  to  be  slain  beside  her  paramour.  The  scene  is  then 
rolled  back,  and  shows  Orestes  standing  over  the  dead,  but 
already  stricken  in  conscience,  and  terrified  at  the  dread  Furies 
with  which  his  mother  had  threatened  him.  With  his  flight  the 
play  concludes. 

So  great  a  subject  could  not  but  find  imitators.  Yet 
Sophocles  and  Euripides  took  quite  a  different  course,  as  the 
very  title  of  their  plays  indicates.  Their  Electras  bring  into 
the  foreground  the  sorrows  and  hopes  of  the  princess,  who 
was  doomed  by  her  unnatural  mother  to  long  servitude  and 
disgrace,  and  was  sick  at  heart  with  hope  deferred  of  her 
brother's  return.  Her  despair  at  the  announcement  of  his  death, 
the  ill-disguised  mental  relief  of  Clytemnestra,  the  sudden  return 
of  Electra's  hope,  the  recognition  of  Orestes — these  have  afforded 
to  Sophocles  one  of  his  most  splendid,  and  to  Euripides  a 
very  affecting  tragedy.  But  a  far  more  interesting  analogy  is 
suggested  by  the  unconscious  parallel  of  Shakspeare,  whose 
Hamlet,  dealing  with  the  very  same  moral  problem,  gathers  into 
one  the  parts  of  Electra  and  of  Orestes,  and  represents  not  only 
the  vengeance  of  the  murdered  king's  son,  but  the  long  mental 
doubts  and  conflicts  of  the  avenger,  living  in  the  palace,  and 
within  sight  of  his  adulterous  mother  and  her  paramour. 
Shakespeare  has  made  the  queen-mother  a  weaker,  and  far  less 
guilty  character,  and  therefore  has  consistently  recoiled  from  the 
dreadful  crisis  of  matricide.1  With  him  the  uncertainty  of  evi- 
dence, in  Hamlet,  takes  the  place  of  the  uncertainty  of  hope,  in 
Electra,  whether  her  brother  would  indeed  return.  Instead 
of  the  oracles  that  urge  Orestes,  and  the  ever-present  tomb 
of  Agamemnon,  he  employs  the  apparition  of  the  king  in  per- 
son. These,  and  other  kindred  features,  make  Hamlet  a  very 
curious  and  instructive  parallel  to  the  Choephori,  the  more 
curious  because  accidental.  But,  like  all  moderns  (even  in- 
cluding the  later  Greeks),  Shakespeare  has  turned  from  the  dis- 
cussion of  great  world-problems  to  personal  and  psychological 

1  There  is  also,  of  course,  the  influence  of  Christianity  in  its  repugnance 
to  bloodshed,  a  repugnance  which  the  Greek  poet  would  not  feel. 


CH.  xv.  THE  EUMEN1DES.  2',  \ 

interests,  and  therefore  his  magnificent  play  wants  the  colossal 
grandeur  and  the  mystic  gloom  of  the  less  developed,  less 
elaborated,  but  greater  conception  of  ^Eschylus. 

§  1  8  1.  The  Eumenides  forms  a  fitting  conclusion  to  the 
trilogy.  It  is  a  play  remarkable  for  many  curious  features.  First, 
we  may  notice  the  quick  changes  of  scene,  which  violate  the 
ordinary  niceties  of  time  and  place.  We  have  the  rocky  fane 
at  Delphi,  and  its  surroundings,  in  the  opening  scene,  then  the 
inside  of  the  temple,  with  the  sleeping  Furies  camped  about  the 
suppliant;  then  again  the  Acropolis  of  Athens,  and  then, 
apparently,  the  neighbouring  Areopagus.  The  extraordinary 
character  of  the  chorus  is  also  to  be  noted.  They  are  not  only 
the  chief  actors  in  the  play,  but  in  hostility  to  the  other  players 
and  representing  a  separate  principle.  Their  terrible  ap- 
pearance, their  awful  attributes,  and  the  dread  incantations 
whereby  they  seek  to  charm  their  victim,  so  impressed  the 
ancients,  that  all  manner  of  anecdotes  are  current  as  to  the 
effect  they  produced.  The  refrain  of  their  song  is  very 
striking.  l 

1   tirl  8e  T(f  Te6v/J.ff(f> 
r6Sf  /j.e\os,  irapaicoiri, 
irapa(popa  (ppfvo8a\rjs, 
vfiiisos  e|  '"Epivviav, 
SfVuios  (ppevuiv,  acpSp- 
fiiKTOS,  avova  fiporols. 

TOVTO  yap  \dx,os  Siavraia 

fj.otp'  eW/cAaxrei/  e/UTre'Scos  exeu', 

Oyarcav  ro'iffiv  avrovpyiai  ^u/u.ireffumi'  fj.ara.ioi, 

ro?s  6/j.apTeTv,  u(pp'  &J>  yav  vireXQy      Qav&v  5' 

OVK  &ya.v  f\evdepos. 

firl  Se  rip  -rfQviJ.iv{p 
r65e  fj.e\os,  irapaKoira., 
•jrapcKfr 
v/j.vos 


/J.IKTOS,  aiova  /3poTois. 

yiyvojj.4va.iffi  \&xn  T(£5'  ^'  a^lv  fKpdvOrj- 
adavdrcav  8'  airf^dv  xtpas,  ovSf  ns  tcrrl 
(rvvSairoip  n-traKoivos. 


272  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xv. 

The  whole  play,  though  revolving  round  Orestes'  deed, 
and  though  calling  in  at  its  close  a  jury  of  Athenian  citizens, 
is,  like  the  Prometheus,  a  conflict  of  gods  and  of  great  world 
principles,  in  which  mortals  seem  hardly  worthy  to  take  part. 
Yet  the  play  also  gives  us  the  first  specimen  of  that  love  of 
trial  scenes  which  runs  through  all  the  later  drama.  The 
Athenians  were,  as  we  know,  peculiarly  addicted  to  this  duty, 
and  became,  indeed,  a  whole  nation  of  jurymen.  But  in 
the  present  case  ^Eschylus  was  promoting  another  object,  and 
one  which,  in  the  hands  of  a  lesser  genius,  might  have  spoilt 
his  artistic  work.  He  wished  to  show  the  august  origin  and 
solemn  purpose  of  the  Court  of  the  Areopagus,  which  was  at 
that  very  time  being  attacked  by  Ephialtes  and  Pericles.  It 
should  also  be  observed  that  this  trilogy,  unlike  that  on  CEdipus, 
ends  with  a  peaceful  result,  and  with  the  solemn  settlement  of 
the  Furies,  under  the  title  of  Eumenides,  in  their  sacred  retreat 
beneath  the  rock  of  the  Areopagus.  The  weary  curse  which 
had  persecuted  the  house  of  Atreus  thus  becomes  exhausted,  and 
Orestes  returns  purified  and  justified  to  his  ancestral  kingdom. 

Though  it  is  deeply  to  be  regretted  that  no  other  speci- 
men of  a  trilogy  has  survived,  it  is  more  than  probable 
that  never  again  was  such  perfection  attained,  either  in  indi- 
vidual plays  or  in  their  artistic  combination.  We  have  the  last 
and  greatest  outcome  of  ^Eschylus'  genius,  and  Sophocles  had 
already  set  the  example  of  contending  with  separate  plays.  It 
is,  I  confess,  somewhat  shocking  to  think  that  a  satyric  drama, 
the  Proteus,  was  performed  after  this  complete  and  satisfying 
series.  From  the  stray  fragments  of  our  poet's  satyric  muse 
which  remain  (especially  from  the  doroXdyoi),  we  know  that  a 
good  deal  of  coarse  jesting  was  permitted  and  beast  nature  in- 
troduced  in  these  merry  afterludes  ;  and  we  cannot  but  fancy 


&fj.otpos, 
Siafj.drciiv  yap 
avarpoirds,  orav  "Apys 
TiOacrbs  &>v  cf>i\ov  'i\r}. 
&rl  -r6v,  S>,  5i6u.tvcu 
Kparep'bv  ovff,  duoitas 
fjLavpovfj.iv  v<p'  a'tfioTos  Vfov. 


CH.  xv.  THE  FRAGMENTS.  273 

that  the  great  effect  of  the  trilogy  must  have  been  consider- 
ably effaced  by  such  an  appendix. 

§  182.  The  fragments  of  ^Eschylus,  though  many,  are  not 
interesting  dramatically,  as  they  seldom  give  us  an  insight  into 
the  structure  of  a  lost  piece,  or  even  poetically,  for  he  was  not  a 
poet  who  strewed  his  canvas  with  lyric  flowers  or  sententious 
aphorisms,  like  his  successors.  He  was  essentially  a  tragedian, 
and  every  word  in  his  play  was  meant  for  its  purpose,  and  for  its 
purpose  only.  He  consequently  afforded  little  scope  for  col- 
lectors of  beautiful  lines  of  general  application.  On  mythical 
questions  he  is  often  quoted,  and  is  a  most  important  autho- 
rity ;  likewise  on  geographical  questions,  for  which  he  had  a 
special  fancy,  as  appears  very  plainly  from  his  extant  plays.  He 
lived  at  the  very  time  when  the  Milesian  school  of  Hecatseus 
had  stimulated  a  taste  for  these  studies,  and  when  the  Greeks 
were  beginning  to  interest  themselves  about  foreign  lands.  The 
play  which  seems  to  me  our  greatest  loss  is  the  Myrmidons,  in 
which  the  subject  was  the  death  of  Patroclus,  and  therefore 
taken  directly  from  the  Iliad,  but  modernised  in  a  remarkable 
way  by  the  warmer  colouring  given  to  the  affection  subsisting 
between  Achilles  and  his  friend.  It  would  indeed  have  been 
interesting  to  see  more  fully  the  treatment  of  such  a  subject  by 
such  a  poet.  The  Ransom  of  Hector  was  also  taken  from  the 
Iliad,  but  several  other  plays  on  the  Trojan  cycle  were  drawn 
from  the  events  preceding  and  following  the  Anger  of  Achilles. 

§  183.  The  intelligent  student,  who  has  read  for  himself 
the  extant  plays  of  yEschylus,  will  form  a  better  judgment  of 
his  genius  than  can  be  suggested  by  any  general  remarks  in  a 
sketch  like  the  present.  What  I  here  offer  by  way  of  reflection 
is  rather  meant  to  guard  against  false  theories  and  mistaken 
estimates,  than  to  supply  any  substitute  for  the  student's 
own  knowledge  of  so  capital  a  figure  in  Greek  Literature.  A 
comparison  with  Pindar  and  Simonides  shows  how  great  an  ad- 
vance he  made,  and  how  independently  he  approached  the 
great  moral  problems  which  the  Greek  poets — the  established 
clergy  of  the  day — were  obliged  to  expound.  yEschylus  was, 
indeed,  essentially  a  theologian,  meaning  by  that  term  not 
merely  a  man  who  is  deeply  interested  in  religious  things,  but 

12* 


274  HISTORY   OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xv. 

a  man  who  makes  the  difficulties  and  obscurities  of  morals  and 
of  creeds  his  intellectual  study.  But,  what  is  more  honourable 
and  exceptional,  he  was  so  candid  and  honest  a  theologian, 
that  he  did  not  approach  men's  difficulties  for  the  purpose  of 
refuting  them,  or  showing  them  weak  and  groundless.  On  the 
contrary,  though  an  orthodox  and  pious  man,  though  clearly 
convinced  of  the  goodness  of  Providence  and  of  the  pro- 
found truth  of  the  religion  of  his  fathers,  he  was  ever  stating 
boldly  the  contradictions  and  anomalies  in  morals  and  in 
myths,  and  thus  naturally  incurring  the  odium  and  suspicion 
of  the  professional  advocates  of  religion  and  their  followers. 
He  felt,  perhaps  instinctively,  that  a  vivid  dramatic  statement 
of  these  problems  in  his  tragedies  was  better  moral  education 
than  vapid  platitudes  about  our  ignorance,  and  about  our  diffi- 
culties being  only  caused  by  the  shortness  of  our  sight.  He 
knew  the  strength  of  human  will,  the  dignity  of  human  liberty, 
the  greatness  of  human  self-sacrifice,  and  yet  he  will  not  abate 
aught  from  the  omnipotence  of  Providence,  the  iron  constraint 
of  a  gloomy  fate,  the  bondage  of  ancestral  guilt  It  is  quite  plain, 
that  the  thought  of  his  day  was  influenced  by  two  dark  under- 
currents, both  of  which  must  have  touched  him — the  Orphic 
mysteries,  with  their  secret  rites  of  sanctification,  their  dogmas  of 
personal  purity  and  future  bliss;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Ionic 
philosophy,  which  in  the  hands  of  Heracleitus  had  not  shunned 
obscurity  and  vagueness,  but  had  shown  enigmas  in  all  the 
ordinary  phenomena  of  human  life.  These  influences  conspired 
with  the  strong  unalterable  genius  of  the  poet,  and  produced 
results  quite  unique  in  the  history  of  Literature.  For  it  is  evi- 
dently absurd  to  attribute  the  massiveness  and  apparent  un- 
couthness  of  ./Eschylus,  as  Schlegel  does,  to  the  conditions  of 
nascent  tragedy.  Phrynichus,  his  contemporary,  was  famed 
for  opposite  qualities,  for  gentle  sweetness  and  lyric  grace.  At 
no  epoch  could  ^schylus  have  been  softened  down  into  a  con- 
ventional artist.  Many  critics  speak  of  him  as  almost  Oriental 
in  some  respects — in  his  bold  metaphor,  in  his  wild  and  irregu- 
lar imaginings ;  and  yet  he  is  censured  by  Aristophanes  for  too 
much  theatrical  craft.  I  suppose  the  former  mean  to  compare 
him  with  the  greatest  of  the  Hebrew  prophets;  nor  does  the  com- 


CH.  XV.  THE  GENIUS   OF  /ESCHYLUS.  275 

parison  seem  unjust,  if  we  confine  it  to  this,  that  both  found 
strange  and  striking  images  to  rouse  their  hearers'  imagination, 
and  that  neither  felt  bound  by  the  logic  of  ordinary  reasoning. 
In  this  matter  Heracleitus  and  ^Eschylus  are  the  masters 
of  bold  and  suggestive  inconsequence.  But  the  obscurity  of 
both  was  that  of  condensation — a  pregnant  obscurity,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  redundant  obscurity  of  some  modern  poets, 
or  the  artificial  obscurity  of  the  Attic  epoch.  His  philosophy 
is  in  the  spirit,  and  not  in  the  diction  of  his  works — in  vast 
conceptions,  not  in  laconic  maxims.  Both  Sophocles  (as  he  him- 
self confesses)  and  Thucydides,  the  highest  types  of  the  Periclean 
epoch,  are  often  obscure,  but,  as  I  said,  are  so  artificially,  not 
from  endeavouring  to  suggest  great  half-grasped  thoughts,  but 
from  a  desire  to  play  at  hide-and-seek  with  the  reader,  and  sur- 
prise him  by  cleverness  of  expression.  We  always  feel  that  JEs- 
chylus  thought  more  than  he  expressed,  that  his  desperate  com- 
pounds are  never  affected  or  unnecessary.  Although,  therefore, 
he  violated  the  rules  which  bound  weaker  men,  it  is  false  to  sa} 
that  he  was  less  an  artist  than  they.  His  art  was  of  a  different 
kind,  despising  what  they  prized,  and  attempting  what  they  did 
not  dare,  but  not  the  less  a  conscious  and  thorough  art 
Though  the  drawing  of  character  was  not  his  main  object,  his 
characters  are  truer  and  deeper  than  those  of  poets  who  at- 
tempted nothing  else.  Though  lyrical  sweetness  had  little  place 
in  the  gloom  and  terror  of  his  Titanic  stage,  yet  here  too,  when 
he  chooses,  he  equals  the  masters  of  lyric  song.  So  long  as  a 
single  Homer  was  deemed  the  author  of  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,  we  might  well  concede  to  him  the  first  place,  and  say 
that  ^Eschylus  was  the  second  poet  of  the  Greeks.  But  by  the 
light  of  nearer  criticism,  and  with  a  closer  insight  into  the 
structure  of  the  epic  poems,  we  must  retract  this  judgment,  and 
assert  that  no  other  poet  among  the  Greeks,  either  in  grandeur 
of  conception,  or  splendour  of  execution,  equals  the  untrans- 
lateable,  unapproachable,  inimitable  ^Eschylus.1 

§  184.  Bibliographical     Turning  to  the  question    of  ^Es- 

1   Aischulos'  bronze-throat  eagle-bark  at  blood 
Has  somehow  spoilt  my  taste  for  twitterings  ! 

R.  BROWNING,  Arist.  Ap.  p.  94. 


276  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XV. 

chylean  literature,  we  find  the  whole  criticism  of  our  texts  to 
depend  on  one  MS.  of  the  tenth  century,  the  celebrated 
Plut.  xxxii.  9,  of  the  Laurentian  library  at  Florence,  which  con- 
tains, with  Sophocles  and  Apollonius  Rhodius,  the  seven 
plays  written  out  in  a  beautifully  neat  hand  with  very  slight, 
somewhat  slanting  characters;  it  has  numerous  scholia,  but  is 
unfortunately  mutilated  at  the  end  of  the  Agamemnon  and 
opening  of  the  Choephori.  From  copies  of  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries,  at  Florence,  Venice,  and  Paris,  these  de- 
fects, and  some  gaps  in  the  scholia,  have  been  partially  re- 
medied. The  scholia  seem  to  be  more  "Byzantine  than  Alex- 
andrian,  and  it  does  not  appear  that,  with  the  exception  of  the 
arguments  prefixed  by  Aristophanes,  much  attention  was  paid 
to  the  poet  by  the  great  critics.  Indeed,  the  same  thing  may 
be  said  of  both  Roman  and  French  imitators.  "While  they 
understood  and  copied  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  ^Eschylus  was 
neglected  as  an  uncouth  and  rude  forerunner  of  the  real  drama. 
We  must  acknowledge  this  much  merit  in  Schlegel,  that  he  led 
dramatic  criticism  into  a  sounder  and  deeper  course.  The  Pro- 
metheus, Perscz,  and  Septem,  which  stand  first  in  the  MSS.,  were 
very  much  more  read  than  the  rest,  and  are  far  better  preserved. 
The  editio  princeps  of  the  text  was  that  of  Aldus  (1518) ;  that  of 
Robortellus  (Venice,  1552)  first  gave  the  scholia.  We  have 
next  the  fuller  and  more  accurate  ed.  Steph.  1557.  Good  early 
critics  were  Dorat,  Canter,  Stanley.  Person  turned  his  critical 
acumen  to  bear  upon  the  text  in  the  Glasgow  edition  of  1794, 
and  then*  followed  the  editions  of  Butler,  of  five  plays  by  Blom- 
field,  and  of  Peile.  In  the  present  day  the  editions  best  worth 
studying  are  those  of  God.  Hermann,  W.  Dindorf,  and  H. 
Weil  for  criticism,  Merkel's  careful  ed.  of  the  Florentine  MS., 
and  that  of  Mr.  Davies  on  the  Agamemnon  and  Choephori, 
which  combines  acute  criticism,  exegesis,  and  a  curious  ver- 
sion in  the  metres  of  the  original.  Mr.  F.  A.  Paley  has  also 
supplied  us  with  an  excellent  handy  edition,  the  most  service- 
able for  ordinary  use.  It  is  the  result  of  long  study  spent 
on  separate  editions  of  the  plays.  Wellauer  and  Linwood 
have  composed  ^Eschylean  lexicons  which  are  useful,  but  even 
the  latter  (1848)  now  somewhat  antiquated.  The  German 


CH.  xv.  MODERN  VERSIONS.  277 

translations  are  endless.  Those  of  Voss,  Droysen,  and  Donner 
may  specially  be  named.1  The  French  have  rather  imitated 
than  reproduced,  if  we  except  the  versions  of  Du  Theil  and 
Brumoy.  In  English  we  have  the  respectable  version  of 
Potter,  the  Agamemnons  of  Prof.  Blackie  (1850),  Symmons, 
Milman,  Conington,  Miss  Swanwick,  and  Mr.  J.  F.  Davies,  and 
very  spirited  versions  of  select  passages  by  Lord  Lytton  in  his 
Rise  and  Fall  of  Athens.  I  call  special  attention  to  the  very 
able  criticism  accompanying  these  translations.  Mrs.  Browning 
has  given  us  an  admirable  Prometheus,  and  lastly,  Mr.  Browning 
has  turned  his  genius  for  reproducing  Greek  plays  upon  this 
masterpiece,  and  has  given  a  version  which  will  probably  not 
permit  the  rest  to  maintain  their  well-earned  fame,  though  it  is 
in  itself  so  difficult  that  the  Greek  original  is  often  required  for 
translating  his  English.  I  confess  that  even  with  this  aid, 
which  shows  the  extraordinary  faithfulness  of  the  work,  I  had 
preferred  a  more  Anglicised  version  from  his  master  hand. 

The  truest  and  deepest  imitation  of  the  spirit  of  ^Eschylus 
in  modern  times  is  not  to  be  sought  in  the  stiff  formalism  ot 
Racine  or  Alfieri,  but  in  the  splendid  Atalanta  in  Calydon  of 
Mr.  Swinburne,  whose  antitheism  brings  him  to  stand  in  an 
attitude  between  human  freewill  and  effort  on  the  one  side,  and 
ruthless  tyranny  of  Providence  on  the  other,  not  approached 
in  poetry  (so  far  as  I  know)  from  ^Eschylus'  day  down  to  our 
own.  Unfortunately,  the  very  poetical  odes  of  his  chorus  are 
diffuse,  and  written  with  all  that  luxuriance  of  rich  sound  which 
in  Mr.  Swinburne  often  dilutes'or  hides  the  depth  and  clear- 
ness of  his  thought.  The  English  reader  must  therefore  by  no 
means  regard  this  part  of  the  play  as  modelled  upon  ^Eschylus, 
nor  as  at  all  representing  his  poetry.  It  is  in  the  plot,  and 
in  the  nervous  compressed  stichomuthia,  or  dialogue  in  alter- 
nate lines,  and  in  the  gloomy  darkness  which  broods  over  the 
action,  that  the  modern  poet  has  caught  the  spirit  of  his  great 
predecessor.  Since  the  Samson  Agonistes  of  Milton,  we  have 

1  Full  information  on  all  the  German  versions  of  the  Oresteia,  from  Von 
Halem  (1785)  to  Donner  (1854),  will  be  found  in  an  article  by  Eichhoff  in 
the  Netie  Jahrbitcher  fitr  PhiMogic,  vol.  cxv. 


278  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XV. 

had  no  such  reproduction  of  the  Greek  drama,  and  those  who 
are  not  in  sympathy  with  Mr.  Swinburne's  other  poems  should 
not  fail  to  turn  to  this  exceptional  work,  which  he  has  never  since 
equalled.  The  Prometheus  Unbound  of  Shelley,  as  he  himself 
tells  us  very  plainly,  is  hardly  intended  as  an  imitation  of  JEs- 
chylus,  but  as  an  original  and  wholly  independent  work. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

SOPHOCLES. 

§  185.  THERE  is  even  less  told  us  about  the  life  of  Sophocles 
than  about  that  of  ^Eschylus,  and,  indeed,  there  seems  to  have 
been  little  that  was  eventful  to  be  told.  He  was  too  young  to 
take  part  in  the  great  struggle  of  the  Persian  war,  and  his  cam- 
paign to  Samos,  in  middle  life,  was  evidently  no  serious  warfare. 
He  refused,  we  are  told,  to  leave  Athens,  which  he  loved,  at 
the  invitation  of  foreign  cities  and  princes,  and  thus  avoided 
the  adventures  of  travelling  which  were  fatal  to  both  his  rivals  ; 
and  though  he  took  part  in  politics  on  the  oligarchical  side, 
as  he  was  perhaps  a  Probulus  when  the  four  hundred  were  es- 
tablished, he  seems  never  to  have  been  a  strong  or  leading  poli- 
tician. His  gentleness,  and  beauty,  and  placid  disposition 
Seem  to  have  saved  him  from  most  of  the  buffets  and  trials  of 
the  world ;  and  he  is,  perhaps,  the  only  distinguished  Athenian 
now  known  who  lived  and  died  without  a  single  enemy. 

He  was  bom  in  the  deme  Colonus,  within  half  an  hour's 
walk  of  Athens,  in  the  scenery  which  he  describes  in  his  famous 
chorus  of  the  second  CEdipus,  and  which  has  hardly  altered  up 
to  the  present  day,  amid  all  the  sad  changes  which  have  seamed 
and  scarred  the  fair  features  of  Attica.  I  know  not,  indeed, 
why  he  calls  it  the  white  (apyijra)  Colonus,  for  it  was  then,  as 
now,  hidden  in  deep  and  continuous  green.  The  dark  ivy  and 
the  golden  crocus,  the  white  poplar  and  the  grey  olive,  are  still 
there.  The  silvery  Cephissus  still  feeds  the  pleasant  rills,  with 
which  the  husbandman  waters  his  thickly  wooded  cornfields  ; 
and  in  the  deep  shade  the  nightingales  have  not  yet  ceased 
their  plaintive  melody. 

His  father's  name  was  Sophillus,  and  the  scholiasts  wrangle 
about  the  dignity  of  his  position  in  life ;  though  he  seems  to 
have  been  no  more  than  a  man  of  middle  rank,  making  his 


•28o  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

income  by  practising  or  directing  a  trade.,  Concerning  his 
mother  and  brethren  there  is  absolute  silence.  Born  about 
496-5  B.C.,  he  was  chosen,  for  his  beauty  and  grace,  to  lead 
the  solemn  dance  in  honour  of  the  victory  at  Salamis.  He 
was  educated  by  Lampros,  a  rival  of  Pindar  and  of  Pratinas, 
as  a  scientific  musician ;  and  this  special  training  in  music 
enabled  him,  in  spite  of  his  weak  speaking  voice,  to  act  with 
great  success  the  parts  of  Thamyras  and  of  Nausicaa,  in  the 
plays  which  he  wrote  concerning  these  personages.  In  468 
he  came  forward  as  a  tragic  poet,  and  at  the  age  of  28,  with  his 
first  piece,  defeated  the  great  ^Eschylus,  who  had  been  for  a 
generation  the  master  of  the  tragic  stage.  .  What  made  the 
victory  more  remarkable  was  the  selection  of  Kimon  and  his 
victorious  colleagues  as  judges,  instead  of  the  ordinary  proce- 
dure by  lot.  From  this  date  till  his  death,  at  the  age  of 
90,  the  poet  devoted  all  his  energy  to  the  production  of  those 
famous  works  of  art,  which  gave  him  such  a  hold  over  the 
Athenian  public,  that  he  came  to  be  considered  the  very  ideal 
of  a  tragic  poet,  and  was  worshipped  after  his  death  as  a  hero, 
under  the  .title  Dexion  (Ae£«W.)  He  is  said  to  have  won 
eighteen  or  twenty  tragic  victories,  and  though  sometimes  post- 
poned to  Philocles  and  others,  was  never  placed  third  in  all  his 
life.  The  author  of  the  Poetic  and  the  Alexandrian  critics 
follow  the  judgment  of  the  Attic  public,  and  most  modern  critics 
have  agreed  with  them  that  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles  are  the 
most  perfect  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  It  is,  indeed,  no 
unusual  practice  to  exhibit  the  defects  of  both  yEschylus  and 
Euripides  by  comparison  with  their  more  successful  rival. 

The  Athenian  public  were  so  delighted  with  his  Antigone 
that  they  appointed  him  one  of  the  ten  generals,  along  with 
Pericles,  for  the  subduing  of  Samos ;  as  regards  which  Pericles 
is  said  to  have  told  him  that  he  knew  how  to  compose  well 
enough,  but  not  how  to  command.  It  is  conjectured  that  on 
this  expedition  he  met  and  knew  Herodotus,  by  whom  several 
passages  in  his  plays,  and  one  in  the  fragments,1  seem  suggested. 

1  Fr.  380,  about  Palamedes'  invention  of  games,  like  the  Lydians'  in- 
vention in  Herod,  i.  94.  This  coincidence  has  not  yet,  I  think,  been 
noticed.  So  also  the  famous  chorus  in  O.  C.  1211,  sq.,  seems  copied 


CH.  xvi.  SOPHOCLES'  PERSONAL   CHARACTER.        281 

If  the  passage  of  the  Antigone  (which  many  critics  declare 
spurious)  be  genuine,  it  was  composed  before  the  poet  went  to 
Samos ;  and  the  conjecture  here  breaks  down.  Yet  I  have  per- 
sonally no  doubt  that  Herodotus,  who  lived  much  at  Athens, 
suggested  these  passages  ;  and  I  am  not  disposed  to  admit  that 
any  of  them  is  spurious,  though  they  may  belong  to  second 
editions  of  their  respective  plays.  He  was  (in  443  B.C.)  one  of 
the  Hellenotamice,  or  administrators  of  the  public  treasury— a 
most  responsible  and  important  post.  He  sided  with  the  oli- 
garchy in  411,  if  he  be  the  Probulus  then  mentioned.  When 
Aristophanes  brought  out  his  Frogs  in  405  B.C.,  the  poet  was  but 
lately  dead,  and,  amid  the  conflict  of  schools  of  poetry,  is  acknow- 
ledged the  genial  favourite  of  all  ; J  the  comic  Phrynichus, 
in  his  Muses,  of  the  same  date,  spoke  of  him  in  very  similar 
terms.  A  splendid  portrait  statue  of  him,  found  a  few  years  ago 
at  Ostia,  and  now  in  the  Lateran  at  Rome,  is  doubtless  a  copy 
of  that  set  up  in  the  theatre  at  Athens  by  Lycurgus,  and  repre- 
sents him  as  worthy  in  dignity  and  beauty  of  all  the  praises 
bestowed  upon  him.  The  various  anecdotes  which  bear  upon 
his  character,  and  which  seem  to  be  partly,  at  least,  drawn  from 
the  high  authority  of  the  memoirs  of  the  contemporary  Ion 
of  Chios,2  all  speak  in  the  same  tone,  and  describe  him  as  of 
easy  temper,  and  much  given  to  the  pleasures  of  love.  He  is 
even  contrasted  with  Euripides  in  the  more  Greek  complexion 
of  his  passion.  Most  of  his  German  panegyrists  are  unable  to 
refute  the  jibe  of  Aristophanes,3  that  in  his  old  days  he  turned 
miser,  and  worked  for  money  like  a  second  Simonides,  but  are 
indignant  at  the  report  that  he  became  attached,  late  in  life,  to  a 
courtesan  named  Theoris,  of  Sikyon.  He  is,  moreover,  quoted 
in  the  first  book  of  Plato's  Republic,  speaking  of  Eros  as  a  fierce 
tyrant,  from  whose  bonds  he  had  escaped  by  advancing  years. 
But  this  probably  alludes  to  the  passions  formed  in  the  palaestra, 
of  which  other  dialogues  of  Plato  tell  us  a  great  deal.  He  is 

from  Artabanus'  speech,  Herod,  vii.  26.  The  attack  on  Egyptian  manners 
in  the  same  play  (w.  337,  sq.)  is  a  still  clearer  case,  perhaps  also  Q.  T. 
981.  Lastly,  we  have  Antig.  vv.  909,  sq. 

1  ef/KoAos  fj.fv  eVflaS',  eu/coAos  8'  fact. 

z  Cf.  fr.  I  of  Ion  in  Muller's  FUG.  *  Pax,  698. 


282  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvr. 

said  to  have  had  a  second  family  by  this  Theoris.  All  the 
Alexandrian  authorities  believed  that  his  legitimate  son  was 
lophon,  son  of  his  wife  Nikostrate,  but  that  of  Theoris  was  born 
Ariston,  who  was  father  of  the  younger  Sophocles.  But  the 
testimony  of  inscriptions,1  which  speak  of  a  Sophocles  corre- 
sponding with  the  younger  of  that  name,  and  even  of  an  lophon, 
son  of  (apparently  this)  Sophocles,  makes  it  probable  that  the 
Life  and  scholiasts  are  wrong  about  the  grandson.  We  have 
no  more  certain  information  about  the  more  famous  story  of 
lophon's  attempt  to  take  the  old  poet's  property  out  of  his 
hands  by  an  action  at  law,  and  how  he  was  defeated  by  the 
reading  of  the  famous  chorus  in  the  CEdipus  at  Colonus,  then 
just  composed.  Most  critics  now  think  that  this  play  was  not, 
like  the  Philoctetes,  the  product  of  Sophocles' old  age,  but  of  his 
mature  life,  though  it  seems  not  to  have  been  brought  out 
till  after  his  death,  probably  by  lophon,  with  considerable 
interpolations.  Aristophanes  (in  the  frogs)  speaks  of  lophon 
as  a  poet  of  uncertain  promise,  but  still  as  the  best  of  the 
Epigoni.  Other  stories,  about  the  respect  shown  him  by  the  be- 
sieging Spartans,  when  he  died,  and  how  his  friends  were  allowed 
to  bury  him  eleven  stadia  on  the  way  to  Dekelea,  may  be  read  in 
the  Life.  It  seems  odd  he  should  not  have  been  laid  in  his  home 
at  Colonus,  which  is  quite  close  to  Athens,  but  possibly,  with 
this  modification,  the  anecdote  may  be  true.  He  was  com- 
monly called  the  Honey  Bee,  and  was  said,  as  almost  every  other 
great  Greek  poet,  to  have  been  peculiarly  imbued  with  Homeric 
thoughts  and  style.  This  vague  statement  is  not  verified  by 
his  extant  plays,  though  he  is  said  in  others  to  have  adapted 
the  Odyssey  repeatedly.  Indeed,  we  may  suspect,  with  Mr. 
Paley,  that  the  Homer  alluded  to  by  these  old  critics  includes 
the  Cyclic  epics,  from  which  he  certainly  borrowed  almost  all 
his  plots. 

But  there  are  other  and  more  definite  things  reported  con- 
cerning his  style,  his  method,  and  his  influence  on  the  history 
of  the  drama.  These  we  shall  best  consider  when  we  have 
given  a  sketch  of  the  extant  plays  and  fragments.  Of  the 

1  See  DindorPs  Poeta  Trag.  p.  12,  note.  The  younger  lophon  would 
be  called  after  his  grandfather. 


CH  xvi.  THE  ANTIGONE.  283 

elegies,  the  paeans,  the  prose  essay  on  the  chorus,1  the  seventy 
tragedies,  the  eighteen  satyric  dramas,  which  the  poet  (after 
making  due  deductions)  seems  fairly  to  be  credited  with,  there 
remain  only  seven  tragedies,  and  of  the  1,000  fragments, 
but  few  are  of  any  length  or  importance.  A  great  many  of 
them  are  indeed  only  quoted  (chiefly  by  Hesychius)  for  the 
sake  of  curious  and  rare  words  which  the  poet  had  employed — 
a  remarkable  feature  in  these  fragments.  Of  the  seven 
tragedies  now  extant  only  two  can  be  dated,  even  approxi- 
mately— the  Antigone,  which  was  brought  out  just  before  the 
expedition  of  Pericles  to  Samos  (440  B.C.),  and  the  Philuctctes, 
which  may  possibly  be  the  last  play  he  wrote,  and  which  ap- 
peared in  409.  Both  these  plays  won  the  first  prize,  and  if  we 
cannot  expect  immaturity  in  the  one,  we  cannot  find  decay  in 
the  other.  But  considering  these,  as  we  are  bound,  first  and 
last,  we  are  at  liberty  to  arrange  the  rest  in  whatever  order  is 
most  convenient  for  critical  purposes. 

§  1 86.  The  Antigone  ^^s,  said  to  be  Sophocles' thirty-second 
work,  and  must,  from  its  date,  have  at  all  events  been  the  work 
of  his  mature  and  ripe  genius.  It  is,  therefore,  in  every  respect 
suitable  to  show  us  the  contrasts  with  the  old  masterpieces,  and 
the  supposed  improvements  which  mark  the  epoch  of  the  per- 
fect Greek  drama.  The  play  formed  no  member  of  a  trilogy, 
but  stood  upon  its  own  basis,  nor  are  we  at  all  justified, 
with  some  loose  critics,  in  supplementing  the  character  of  the 
heroine  from  the  other  plays  on  the  Theban  legend  (the  two 
(Edij>uses\  plays  written  in  after  years,  and  without  any 
intention  of  being  viewed  in  connection  with  the  Antigone. 
It  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  as  soon  as  the  tragic  poets 
abandoned  connected  plays,  they  assumed  the  liberty  of 
handling  the  same  personage  quite  differently  at  different 
times,  nor  do  they  feel  in  the  least  bound  by  an  earlier  con- 
ception. This  apparent  inconsistency,  which  contrasts  so 
strongly  with  the  practice  of  modern  dramatists,  is  due  to  the 
fact,  that  while  the  moderns  have  an  unlimited  field  for  the 
choice  of  subjects,  and  therefore  naturally  choose  a  new  title 
to  embody  a  new  type,  the  Greeks  were  very  limited  in  the 
1  This,  which  rests  rpon  Suidas  alone,  is  very  doubtfu 


284  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

legends  which  they  treated,  and  must  therefore  constantly  re- 
produce the  same  heroes  and  heroines.  But  they  avoided  the 
consequent  monotony  by  the  poetic  license  of  varying  the 
character  to  suit  the  special  play.  We  must  therefore  study 
the  characters  in  each  play  by  themselves,  and  without  re- 
ference to  their  recurrence  in  other  works  of  the  same  poet 

The  first  point  to  be  remarked  in  the  play  is  the  subordination 
of  everything  else  to  the  character  of  Antigone.  In  ^schylus' 
conception — the  deepest  conception — of  a  tragedy,  the  actors 
were,  so  to  speak,  subordinated  to  the  progress  of  a  great 
catastrophe,  which  carried  them  along  in  its  fatal  course.  They 
act  with  apparent  liberty  and  force  of  character,  but  are  really 
the  sport  and  plaything  of  great  agents,  which  they  cannot  stay 
or  control.  In  the  tragedy  of  Sophocles,  where  character-draw- 
ing (»/0o7ro«a,  as  it  was  called)  was  the  first  object,  the  power  of 
human  will  is  the  predominant  feature,  and  the  real  conflict  of 
moral  and  social  forces  is  thrown  into  the  background. 

^Eschylus,  as  has  been  already  noted  (p.  257),  had  blocked 
out  the  whole  plot  briefly  at  the  end  of  his  Theban  trilogy,  and 
indicated  where  a  tragic  conflict  might  be  found.  But  when 
Sophocles  takes  up  the  subject,  the  firm  determination  of 
Antigone  to  perform  the  sacred  duties  of  fraternal  love  is  op- 
posed to  no  principle  of  parallel  importance,  to  no  law  which 
commands  any  respect,  but  simply  to  the  timid  submissiveness  of 
her  foil,  Ismene,  to  the  arbitrary  decree  of  a  vulgar  and  heart- 
less tyrant,  and  to  the  cold  and  self-interested  apathy  of  a 
mean  and  cowardly  chorus.  Antigone  is  accordingly  sustained 
from  the  beginning  by  a  clear  consciousness  that  she  is  ab- 
solutely right,  the  whole  sympathy  of  the  spectator  must  go  with 
her,  and  all  the  course  of  the  play  is  merely  interesting  as 
bringing  out  her  character  in  strong  and  constant  relief.  But  as 
she  consciously  faces  death  for  an  idea,  she  may  rather  be  en- 
rolled among  the  noble  army  of  martyrs,  who  suffer  in  the  day- 
light of  clear  conviction,  than  among  the  far  nobler  few  who  in 
doubt  and  darkness  have  striven  to  feel  out  a  great  mystery, 
and  in  their  very  failure  have  '  purified  the  terror  and  the  pity ' 
of  awe-struck  humanity.  A  martyr  for  a  great  and  recog- 
nised truth  is  not  the  fit  central  figure  of  a  tragedy  in  the 


CH.  xvi.  THE  ANTIGONE.  285 

highest  and  proper  sense.  The  Antigone  is  therefore  not  a  very 
great  tragedy,  though  it  is  a  mcst  brilliant  and  beautiful 
dramatic  poem.  The  very  opening  scene  brings  out  the  some- 
what hard  and  determined  character  of  the  heroine,  in  con- 
trast to  her  weaker  sister.  As  the  chorus  hints,1  she  had 
inherited  this  fierce  nature  from  her  father.  But  the  fatal 
effects  of  the  ancestral  curse  on  the  house  of  OEdipus,  though 
often  alluded  to,  are  no  moving  force  in  the  drama.  The 
chorus  appears  in  the  parados  unconscious  of  the  plot, 
and  sings  a  beautiful  ode  on  the  delivery  of  Thebes,  rele- 
vant enough  to  the  general  subject,  but  not  bearing  on  the 
real  interest  of  the  play  ;  and  this  remark  may  be  applied  to 
all  the  following  choral  odes,  which  with  much  lyric  beauty 
celebrate  subjects  akin  to  the  action,  but  outside  it.  The 
decree  against  Polynices'  burial  is  then  formally  announced  by 
Creon,  when  one  of  the  watchmen  enters,  a  very  striking  and 
well-conceived  character,  whose  vulgar  selfishness  and  low 
cowardice  seem  meant  as  the  opposite  extreme  in  human  nature 
to  the  heroine.  The  homely  and  somewhat  comic  vein  in  which 
he  speaks  may  indeed  be  shocking  to  dignified  French  imi- 
tators of  classic  suffering,  but  affords  an  interesting  parallel 
to  the  contrasts  so  affectingly  introduced  in  the  greatest 
English  tragedies.  The  reader  will  not  have  forgotten  the  nurse 
Kilissa  in  ^Eschylus'  Choephori.  Then  follows  the  brilliant 
narrative  of  the  capture  of  Antigone,  and  her  interrogation  by 
Creon.  She  here  shows  no  vestige  of  fear  or  of  quailing,  and 
even  Ismene  braves  death,  though  harshly  checked  and  'even 
insulted  by  her  more  masculine  sister.  The  chorus  suggests 
that  Creon's  son  was  betrothed  to  the  princess,  yet  does  not  press 
the  point,  but  upon  her  sentence  sings  the  woes  of  the  Labda- 
kidae,  and  the  horrors  of  an  ancestral  taint.  The  appearance  of 
Harmon  is  a  point  of  deep  interest,  and  has  been  treated  by 

V.  471  :  8rj\ot  rb  ytvvriijC  w/j&v  €*£  oi/uot;  irarpbs 

TTJS  iraiS6s'  eftceiv  5'  ou/c  eTricrraTai  KUKO?S. 

I  quote  these  words  to  justify  myself  against  the  able  criticism  of  Mr. 
Evelyn  Abbott  on  the  parallel  argument  concerning  Antigone  in  my  Social 
Life  in  Greece.  I  cannot  but  sympathise  deeply  with  his  enthusiastic 
reading  of  the  character  in  the  Journal  of  Philology,  vol.  viii.  pp.  I,  sq. 


286  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

the  poet  in  a  very  peculiar  way.  The  young  prince  argues  the 
policy  of  Creon  to  be  a  mistaken  public  policy,  and  cites  the 
general  murmuring  of  discontent  against  it,  all  the  while  con- 
cealing his  own  strong  personal  interest  in  Antigone.  Creon 
and  the  chorus  both  see  through  the  young  man's  mind,  the  one 
by  repeatedly  taunting  him  as  Antigone's  advocate,  the  other, 
upon  his  angry  exit,  singing  a  famous  ode  on  the  powers  of 
Eros,  which  is  not  directly  suggested  by  the  preceding  dia- 
logue.1 

It  seems  likely  that  to  the  Athenian  public  of  that  day 
any  pleading  of  Haemon's  on  the  ground  of  love  would  be 
thought  unseemly  and  undignified,  until  Euripides  had  taught 
them  that  even  on  the  stage  art  must  not  ignore  nature.  Still 
more  remarkable  is  the  absence  of  any  allusion  to  Haemon 
in  the  long  commos  sung  by  Antigone  and  the  chorus,  as  she 
passes  across  the  stage,  on  the  way  to  her  tomb.  For  she 
complains  bitterly  of  the  loss  of  bridal  song  and  nuptial  bliss, 
as  every  dying  Greek  maiden  did,  thus  exactly  reversing  the 
notions  of  modern  delicacy.  A  modern  maiden  would  have 
lamented  the  separation  from  her  lover,  but  certainly  not  the 
loss  of  the  dignity  and  the  joys  of  the  married  state.  The 
commos  of  Antigone  has  been  criticised  from  another  point 
of  view,  as  unworthy  of  the  brave  and  dauntless  character 
of  the  heroine.  It  is  thought  unnatural  that  she  who  had 
deliberately  chosen  death  for  the  sake  of  duty,  should  shrink 
and  wail  at  its  approach.  But  sound  critics  have  justly 


]  "Epvs  avi 
*Eptas,  t>s  fv  KT-fifuuri  iriirrfis 
§s  ev  /J.a\aKcus  irapetais 


(potras  8'  virepir6tmos  tv  T'  aypov6/j.ois  av\cus' 

Kal  <r'  our'  aQavdruv  0vf  i^tos  ouStis 

oW  afjLeplcav  eV  avdp^-jfuv,  6  5' 

ffv  Kal  SiKaluv  afiiKovs 

typevas  irapaffva.s  eirl  Aco.Sa  • 

<rb  iced  r6Sf  VCIK 


Ka  8'  frapy^s  I3\f<pdpcoi>  ?/iepos  fi>\firrpov 
as,  T£>V  fj.eyd\wv  oi>x^  irdpeSpos 
os  yap  e/jnral£fi  Of 


CH.  xvi.  THE  ANTIGONE.  287 

vindicated  this  as  a  human  feature,  though  a  weakness,  and 
therefore  more  interesting  and  affecting  than  its  absence  or 
contradiction.  In  my  opinion  there  is  even  yet  a  lack  of 
humanity  in  the  character,  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  see  this 
very  interesting  passage  condemned.  But  I  confess  that  the 
counter  revulsion  from  quailing  and  fear  to  a  bold  facing  of 
death,  such  as  Euripides  has  painted  it  in  his  Iphigenia,  appears 
to  me  not  only  nobler  but  more  natural.  For  it  is  impossible  to 
escape  the  suggestion  in  the  Antigone  that  her  bold  defiance  of 
Creon  was  ostentatious,  and  that  it  breaks  down  in  the  face  of  the 
awful  reality.1  I  would  further  call  attention  to  the  remarkably 
unsympathetic  and  cold  attitude  of  the  chorus,  who  far  from 
being '  ideal  spectators,'  or  even  '  accomplices,'  look  on  with  re- 
spectful but  heartless  tears,  and  offer  such  cold  comfort  to  An- 
tigone, that  her  complete  isolation  affects  the  spectator  with  the 
deepest  pity.  Nowhere  (I  think)  does  the  chorus  declare  for 
the  laws  of  religion  and  humanity  against  the  arbitrary  voice  of 
the  tyrant.  The  entrance  of  Teiresias  marks  the  commencement 
of  the  TrepnreTeia,  or  catastrophe,  and  his  character  is  conceived, 
as  in  the  (Edipus  Rex,  to  be  that  of  a  noble  and  gloomy 
prophet.  But  the  poet  does  not  fail  to  put  sceptical  sneers  in 
the  mouths  of  his  opponents.  As  soon  as  Teiresias  has  passed 
off  with  his  threatening  prophecy,  the  chorus  in  alarm  warn 
Creon  of  his  danger,  and  the  tyrant  is  made  to  change  his 
mind  and  pass  from  obstinacy  to  craven  cowardice,  with  a  sud- 
denness only  to  be  excused  because  this  character  excites  no 
interest,  and  must  have  wearied  us  had  its  changes  been  treated 
in  detail.  The  catastrophe  of  the  deaths  of  Antigone  and 
Hremon,  which  reminds  us  of  the  end  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  is 
followed  by  that  of  Eurydice,  the  wife  of  Creon.  The  lamen- 
tations of  the  tyrant,  which  the  spectator  views  rather  with 
satisfaction  than  with  pity,  conclude  the  play. 

1  Yet  I  am  not  sure— and  this  is  a  great  heresy — that  Sophocles 
thought  of  more  than  the  immediate  situation  when  he  composed  this 
commos.  I  will  show  other  instances  by  and  bye,  where  he  seems  to  have 
sacrificed  consistency  of  character  distinctly  for  the  sake  of  dwelling  upon 
an  affecting  situation,  and  writing  affecting  poetry.  This  is  a  vice  gene- 
rally attributed  to  Euripides.  I  think  we  can  show  it  to  exist  no  less  in 
Sophocles  ;  cf.  below,  pp.  291,  310. 


2S8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xvi. 

This  is  the  drama  which  has  not  only  struck  ancient  critics  as 
one  of  the  greatest  works  of  its  great  author,1  but  which  has  fas- 
cinated modern  taste  more  than  any  other  remnant  of  Greek 
tragedy.  This  latter  effect  is  easily  understood,  for  in  the  first 
place  the  conflicting  interests  are  easily  comprehended,  and  in- 
volve no  mystery,  and  secondly,  the  whole  play  turns  on  strictly 
human  interests  and  actions,  and  is  absolutely  devoid  of  any 
interference  of  the  gods,  which  must  be  foreign  to  the  modern 
stage.  The  conflict  of  liberty  against  despotism  became  in  fact 
the  dominant  idea  of  the  last  century,  and  thus  men  turned  with 
interest  to  the  old  Greek  expression  of  the  same  conflict.  But 
long  before  this,  the  subject  was  treated  by  Euripides  in  a  lost 
tragedy,  in  which  the  love  of  Hsemon  and  Antigone  was  not 
handled  with  the  coldness  and  reserve  of  the  Periclean  age.a 
Then  came  a  celebrated  paraphrase  or  imitation  by  the  Roman 
Attius,  which  is  said  to  have  suggested  some  points  even 
to  Virgil.  The  t  treatment  of  the  story  in  Seneca's  T/iebais., 
a  tragedy  of  which  most  is  preserved,  and  in  Statins'  epic 
poem  of  the  same  title,  is  quite  independent  of  Sophocles. 
Polynices'  wife,  Argia,  shares  Antigone's  heroism,  and  neither 
expresses  the  least  fear  of  death  shown  by  the  greater  and  more 
natural  Antigone  of  the  Greek  poet.  These  inferior  works  were 
unfortunately  the  models  of  most  of  the  French  imitators. 
There  was,  however,  an  old  French  translation  by  Bai'f,  in  1573. 
Gamier  in  1580,  Rotrou  in  1638,  and  d'Assezan  in  1686 
brought  out  Antigones  based  upon  Sophocles  and  all  the  Roman 
versions  of  the  story,  with  features  added  not  only  from  Euri- 
pides' Phoemssce,  but  from  the  weak  sentimentality  of  the 
French  stage.  No  antique  subject  was  more  certain  to  attract 
Alfieri,  with  his  monomaniac  hate  of  tyranny  and  tyrants.  But 
his  Antigone  (1783),  though  a  bold  attempt  to  reintroduce  sim- 

1  Strangely  enough,  there  was  an  opinion  abroad  in  old  times  that  it 
was  spurious,  being  really  the  work  of  lophon,  and  not  of  Sophocles.     I 
can  hardly  fancy  this  opinion  existing  without  some  definite  evidence. 
We  only  have  it  in  a  passage  published  in  Cramer's  Anecdota,  and  without 
reasons. 

2  Cf.  Euripides,  frag.  157  sq.,  and  the  remarks  of  Aristophanes  (the 
grammarian)  in  his  preface  to  Sophocles'  Antigone. 


CH.  xvi.  THE  ELECTRA.  289 

plicity  into  his  subject,  is  evidently  based  upon  the  French 
travesties  of  the  play,  and  of  course  the  relations  of  Hsemon 
and  Antigone  come  into  the  foreground.  His  play  is  forcible, 
but  monotonous,  as  he  fails  in  all  those  delicate  touches,  and 
various  contrasts  of  character,  in  which  Sophocles,  with  all 
his  simplicity,  abounds.  Marmontel's  libretto  for  Zingarelli's 
opera  (1790)  seems  to  have  excited  little  attention.  A  prose 
version  of  the  legend  by  Ballanche  (1814)  is  apparently  very 
popular  and  highly  esteemed  in  France. 

The  taste  of  the  present  century  has  fortunately  reverted  to 
the  pure  art  of  Sophocles,  and  in  1844  a  peculiar  attempt  was 
made,  with  the  aid  of  Mendelssohn's  noble  music,  to  reproduce 
the  Greek  Antigone  in  a  form  approaching  the  original  perform- 
ance. But,  in  my  opinion,  this  revival  is  a  complete  failure,  not 
only  from  the  character  of  the  music,  which  would  have  been 
to  a  modern  audience  intolerable,  had  it  been  Greek,  but  on 
account  of  the  modern  playing  of  the  parts,  in  which  a  quantity 
of  action  was  introduced  quite  foreign  to  the  antique  stage.  Of 
the  English  versions  that  of  Mr.  Plumptre  is  not  only  the  most 
recent,  but  the  best. 

§  187.  A  certain  general  resemblance  leads  us  to  consider  the 
Electro,  next  in  order.  The  relation  of  the  heroine  to  her  sister 
Chrysothemis  is  very  similar  to  that  of  Antigone  and  Ismene. 
There  is  also  the  same  hardness  in  both  heroines,  a  hardness 
amounting  to  positive  heartlessness  in  Electra,  who,  when  she 
hears  her  brother  within  murdering  his  and  her  mother,  actually 
calls  out  to  him  to  strike  her  again  (v.  1415).  This  revolting 
exclamation,  and,  indeed,  the  easy  way  in  which  matricide  is 
regarded  all  through  the  play,  contrasts  strongly  with  the  far 
deeper,  more  human,  and  more  religious  conception  of  ^Es- 
chylus'  Choephori,  and  reduces  the  Electra  as  a  tragedy  to  a  far 
lower  level.  In  fact,  here  as  elsewhere,  Sophocles  has  sacri- 
ficed the  tragedy  for  the  sake  of  developing  a  leading  character. 
He  desires  to  fix  the  sympathy  of  the  spectator  on  Electra  and 
Orestes.  He  therefore  treats  the  command  of  Apollo  as  an 
absolute  justification  of  the  crime,  and  puts  out  of  sight  the 
dread  Eumenides,  with  their  avenging  horrors.  This  is  dis- 
tinctly the  old  epic  view  of  the  matter,  more  than  once 

VOL.  r. — 13 


2Qo  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xvi. 

suggested  in  the  Odyssey,  in  contrast  to  the  conception  of 
Stesichorus,  and  perhaps  other  lyric  poets,  with  whom  the  notion 
of  blood-guiltiness,  and  the  necessity  of  purification  for  sin, 
became  of  primary  importance,  and  who  served  as  a  model  for 
yEschylus.  Thus  here  also  Sophocles  was  truly  Homeric,  but 
may  be  held  to  have  made  a  retrograde  step  in  the  deeper  his- 
tory of  morals.  There  are,  moreover,  many  Euripidean  features 
in  the  play.  The  angry  wranglings  of  his  characters,  which 
occur  often  in  Sophocles,  are  by  most  critics  forgotten,  when 
they  come  to  censure  his  successor.  There  is  also  not  a 
little  inconsistency  in  the  effusiveness  of  the  heroine  on  re- 
cognising her  brother,  an  effusiveness  which  amounts  to  folly, 
and  her  stern  repression  of  words  when  ./Egisthus  desires  to 
plead  for  his  life.  This  inconsistency  was  admitted,  I  venture 
to  think,  on  account  of  the  seductive  lyrical  opportunity  offered 
by  the  scene  of  recognition.  The  same  weakness  is  still  more 
obvious  when  a  pathetic  lament  is  uttered  by  Electra  over  the 
unreal  ashes  of  her  brother,  which  the  spectator,  who  is  aware 
of  the  truth,  admires  but  cannot  hear  with  any  real  pity.  But 
the  speech  was  too  affecting  to  be  omitted.  ! 

1  vv.  II26-6O  :     &  <pi\TaTOV  /j.vrifi.e'iov  avQpdiiruv  e/tol 
»f  UX^S  'Ope'errou  \oiir6v,  &s  <r'  air 


vvv  /j.ff  yap  ovSev  ovra  j8aaTa£iw  x 
S6/j.tav  tie  a\  3>  TTOL,  \a/j.irpbv  e|eVej 
ws  &<pe\ov  irdpoiOev  4ic\Hrfiv  fiiov, 
vplv  fs  %svr\v  ere  yaiav  eicjrffj.il/ai  x.£ 


SITUS  Baviav  etcetera  -rf,  -rAP  Jifiepa, 
rv/j./3ov  irarpyov  KOIVUV  ej'A.TJX'i'S  fifpos. 
vvv  8'  eicrbs  otxuv  KOLTC\  yrjs  a\\iis  <f>vyas 
KaKtSy  a.it<a\ov,  (rrjs  Ka.aiyv4)TT\s  81^0  • 
KOUT'  ev  (p't\ai<ri  xfp^v  V  TaXaiv'  iyia 
\ovrpois  ff'  e'it6<r/j.Ticr'  ofof  •jro/x(/>Ae/cToi;  irvpbs 
a.vei\6fj.i)v,  u>s  elitAs,  aBXiov  fidpos. 
d\A'  eV  |eVotcrj  XePff^  Kr]Sev6els  rd\as 
fffitKpbs  irpoff-fjKfts  oyicos  ev  a/j.iKpf<  itv-rei. 
ofyuoi  rd\aifa  rrjs  f/j.rjs  Trd\ai  rpo<pTJs 
avu><pe\'f]TOv,  T^V  eyu  Qajji'  a/j.<pl  ffol 
-nov<f  y\vKe?  irapfffxov.   oijre  ydp  wore 


CH.  xvi.  SCENE  OF  THE  ELECTRA.  291 

I  cannot  fancy  ^Eschylus  thus  utilising  an  artificial  situa- 
tion. It  is  the  victory  of  sentiment  over  greater  and  nobler 
interests,  and  in  this  Sophocles,  and  not  Euripides,  marks  the 
rise  of  a  new  epoch  —  an  epoch  like  that  opened  by  Raffaelle 
and  by  Weber  in  other  arts,  where  the  master  is  still  great,  but 
is  the  author  of  a  rapid  and  melancholy  decay  into  sentimen- 
talism.  The  attitude  of  the  chorus  differs  notably  from  that 
of  the  Antigone.  It  is  the  confidant  and  helper  of  the  king's 
children,  and  takes  an  active  part  in  the  progress  of  the  play. 
But  for  this  very  reason,  the  choral  odes,  which  are  strictly 
to  the  point,  are  lyrically  very  inferior  to  the  beautiful  poems 
inserted  in  the  Antigone.  It  is  remarkable  that  while  ^Eschylus 
never  mentions  Mycenae,  and  lays  the  scene  of  his  Choephori 
at  Argos,  Sophocles,  more  accurately,  makes  Mycenae  his  scene, 
and  in  the  opening  even  describes  the  relative  positions  of  the 
two  cities  ;  but  I  am  at  a  loss,  though  personally  familiar  with 
the  country,  to  find  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  old 
pedagogue  and  Orestes  approach  it,  and  should  not  be  sur- 
prised if  this  were  one  of  the  instances  of  geographical  inac- 
curacy with  which  Strabo  charges  both  Sophocles  and  Euri- 
pides. *  I  suppose  the  recent  reassertion  of  Mycenae,  by  the 
appearance  of  its  citizens  in  the  Persian  war,  must  have  made 
its  name  momentarily  prominent  in  the  youth  of  Sophocles, 


crv  7'  $(rda  fj.a\\ov  3)  KCL/JLOV  (j)i\os 
oiiO'  ol  /car'  olKov  •fjffa.v,  aAA'  e'-ycb  Tpo<p6s  ' 
€701  8'  a5eAc|>r;  crol  TrpocrrjuScfytrji'  a«i. 
vvv  8'  c/cAeAoiTTE  ravr'  tv  ^/ue'pas  fJ-ia 
6av6vri  avv  ffoi.  irdfra  yap  ffwapirdcras 
0ueAA'  '6ircas  /Se&rjKas.  o^x^Tat  irarfip  • 
TtQvfiK1  ey<>>  ffoi  '  <j)pov5os  avrbs  eT  Qavtav 
ye\<affi  8'  e'xfyof  '  naiverai  8'  v<j>'  TjSovris 
(UTJrrjp  a.p.4iT<ap,  rjs  ffj.ol  <rv  iro\\d.KLs 
<f)7tfj.as  \d6pa  TTpof'Tre^iTres  a>s  <f>avovfM€vos 
Tifj.<i>pbs  avr6s.  a\\a  Tav0'  6  Svcrrvx^js 
8a.l/J.cov  6  ff&s  re  Ka/j.bs  e|o<|>€/A6TO, 
Ss  <r  aiSe  fj.oL  Trpovirffj.tyfi'  avrl  (j>i\rdTr]s 
fj.op(prjs  ffiro56v  re  Kal  ffKiav  a.via<$>s\ri. 
of/j.oi  uoi. 


1  Cf.  ill  irag.  530. 


292  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xvr. 

and  before  ^Eschylus  brought  out  his  Orestean  trilogy.1  The 
scene  of  the  drama  must,  therefore,  have  been  determined 
by  the  local  politics  of  the  day,  which  would  put  forwardi 
Mycenae,  if  Argos  and  Athens  were  at  variance.  But  this  is 
a  mere  conjecture.  The  critics  have  animadverted  upon  the 
anachronism  of  representing  Orestes  as  killed  at  the  Pythian 
games,  but  there  is  surely  no  sense  in  the  objection.  Almost 
all  the  games  in  Greece  were  ascribed  to  mythical,  nay,  even 
to  divine  founders,  and  to  assign  to  any  of  them  a  late  and 
historical  origin  would  have  offended  Greek  taste.  About  the 
beauty  of  the  narrative  there  can  be  no  question.  It  is  remark- 
able that  Sophocles  reverses  the  order  of  the  murders,  and 
makes  Clytemnestra  suffer  before  ^Egisthus,  an  arrangement 
which  destroys  the  awful  climax  in  the  Choephori — indeed,  when 
the  mother  has  been  sacrificed  little  interest  remains  about  her 
paramour.  The  French  critics  are  almost  indignant  at  the 
idea  of  a  king  on  the  stage,  who  only  comes  in  to  die.  But  of 
course  his  death  is  necessary  to  the  piece,  and  if  Sophocles  did 
not  require  him  as  a  character,  he  shows  true  and  great  art  in 
only  introducing  him  when  necessary.  A  perfect  library  has 
been  written  on  the  three  Electras  of  the  three  Greek  poets, 
generally  with  the  object  of  detracting  from  ^schylus,  and  still 
more  from  Euripides,  to  extol  Sophocles.  The  reader  has 
already  seen  how  false  such  an  estimate  is  towards  ^Eschylus. 
I  shall  not  enter  upon  the  Electro,  of  Euripides  till  we  have 
become  acquainted  with  that  poet  in  the  course  of  the  present 
history. 

1  All  the  critics  follow  Pausanias  in  assuming  that  Mycenae  remained 
independent  up  to  468  B.C.,  and  that  the  ffwoiKia-pfc  of  this  and  other 
towns  by  Argos  took  place,  through  fear  of  Sparta,  after  the  Persian  wars. 
I  cannot  conceive  this  policy  to  have  arisen  so  late,  and  believe  the  auto- 
nomy, and  perhaps  even  the  existence,  of  Mycenae  to  have  ceased  at  latest 
when  Argos  became  great  under  Pheidon,  about  a  century  earlier.  My 
views  were  published  in  the  fifth  number  of  ffermathena,  and  ultimately 
converted  Dr.  Schliemann,  as  I  had  predicted  that  no  fifth  century  remains 
would  be  found  in  his  excavations.  He  has  translated  my  article  in  the 
French  edition  of  his  Mycentz.  The  evidence  he  has  produced  points  to  a 
very  old  de?lruction  of  the  city,  perhaps  even  at  the  time  of  the  Doric 
invasion. 


CH.XVI.      IMITATIONS  OF  THE  ELECTRA.  293 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  imitations  of  the  story,  or  the  im- 
provements attempted  upon  it,  in  subsequent  times.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  there  were  several  Roman  versions.  Cicero 
speaks  of  two,  Suetonius  alludes  to  them,  and  so  evidently  does 
Virgil,  when  using  in  a  simile  the '  Agamemnonius  scenis  agitatus 
Orestes.'  But  none  of  them  have  survived.  The  Orestes  ridi- 
culed by  Juvenal  may  have  been  a  mere  fiction,  but  the  choice 
of  this  title  proves  the  popularity  of  the  subject.  In  the  i6th 
century,  there  was  a  translation  by  L.  Bai'f.  But  in  1 708,  Crebil- 
lon  brought  out  his  Electra,  a  play  which  introduced  a  series  of 
love  affairs  between  Orestes,  Electra,  and  a  son  and  daughter  of 
^Egisthus,  fabricated  for  the  purpose.  These  novelties,  together 
with  storms  and  other  adventures,  so  complicated  and  changed 
the  play,  that  the  author  could  fairly  boast  his  own  originality, 
and  proclaim  that  he  had  taken  nothing  from  Sophocles,  whom 
he  had  never  read.  Passing  by  the  now  unknown  work  of 
Longepierre  in  1719,  we  come  to  Voltaire's  Oreste  (1750),  which 
is  said  to  owe  it  a  good  many  thoughts.  Some  of  Crebillon's 
inventions  are  also  adopted,  but  the  main  novelty  is  the  ex- 
citement produced  by  the  dangers  which  Orestes  encounters  in 
attaining  his  vengeance.  For  greater  detail  upon  this  and  suc- 
ceeding efforts,  the  reader  should  consult  the  history  of  French 
Literature  in  connection  with  the  drama  of  Sophocles  in  M. 
Patin's  admirable  sketch.1  He  has  forgotten  to  mention  how 
closely  the  Athalie  in  Racine's  celebrated  play  has  been  copied 
from  Sophocles'  Clytemnestra.  The  very  device  of  a  disturb- 
ing dream  is  employed  to  rouse  Athalie's  fears,  and  Joas  stands 
to  her  in  a  similar  relation  to  that  of  Orestes  and  Clytemnestra. 
The  famous  Orestes  of  Alfieri  was  of  course  based  on  Cre- 
billon  and  Voltaire ;  indeed,  we  know  that  the  poet's  very  de- 
fective education  did  not  then  permit  him  to  read  a  Greek  play 
in  the  original.  As  was  his  habit,  he  simplifies  the  plot,  and 
gets  rid  of  all  superfluous  characters ;  but  the  great  strain  he 
keeps  up,  and  the  monotony  of  his  speakers,  make  it  a  tedious 
play  to  read.  He  is  noted  as  having  been  the  first  to  paint  the 
quarrels  and  the  remorse  of  the  adulterous  pair,  and  with  his 
usual  hatred  of  tyrants,  he  makes  yEgisthus  weep  with  terror 

1  Sophocle,  pp.  366,  sq. 


294  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XVI, 

• 

when  he  finds  he  must  die.     There  are  several  later  versions, 
up  to  the  Orestie  of  Alexandre  Dumas. 

§  1 88.  We  may  take  up  the  Trachinia  next,  because  its 
heroine— the  only  other  extant  heroine  in  Sophocles — stands 
in  marked  and  pleasant  contrast  to  those  we  have  just  discussed. 
As  to  the  date  of  the  play,  it  is  agreed  that  it  comes  either  very 
early  or  very  late  in  the  poet's  career.  The  differences  from 
the  other  plays,  and  supposed  inferiority,  are  the  grounds  which 
have  led  to  this  opinion.  Some  have  even  declared  it  spurious, 
and  the  work  of  lophon,  or  some  other  weaker  hand.  It  is 
impossible  to  decide  the  dispute  about  its  age,  though  its 
genuineness  must  certainly  be  asserted.  On  the  whole,  I  rather 
incline  to  place  it  as  the  earliest  extant  work  of  Sophocles. 
There  seems  a  certain  hesitation  in  the  author,  who  desires  to 
make  Deianira  the  protagonist,  and  yet  chooses  a  myth  of 
which  Heracles  is  necessarily  the  central  figure.  Thus  there 
are  two  distinct  catastrophes — that  of  the  heroine,  which  is  first 
in  interest,  but  is  treated  as  a  mere  incident ;  and  that  of  the 
hero,  who  is  absent  during  all  the  action,  but  whose  death 
forms  the  solemn  conclusion  of  the  play.  It  almost  seems  to 
me  as  if  the  poet  were  feeling  his  way  to  making  the  character 
of  a  woman  the  prominent  feature  of  the  play,  and  yet  afraid  to 
do  so  without  weaving  in  another  catastrophe,  afraid  also  to 
entitle  his  play  (like  his  Antigone  and  Electra)  Deianira.  It  is 
the  only  extant  play  of  Sophocles  which  takes  its  name  from 
the  chorus,  and  when  we  reflect  that  at  least  one  half  of 
^Eschylus'  plays  are  so  named,  while  less  than  one-third  of 
Sophocles' — and  mostly  satirical  plays — follow  this  rule,  we 
may  draw  another  slight  argument  in  favour  of  its  early  date, 
before  the  poet  had  abandoned,  perhaps,  the  ^Eschylean  fashion 
of  calling  his  plays  after  their  most  important  feature— the  chorus. 
Again,  as  the  Philoctetes,  which  shows  no  sign  of  weakness  or 
failure,  appeared  in  409,  and  the  poet  did  not  survive  the  year 
405,  it  seems  very  strange  that  so  rapid  a  decadence  should 
take  place  in  these  years,  in  which  no  tradition  mentions  any 
play  but  the  (Edipus  at  Colonus.  Internal  evidence  from  style 
has  been  freely  employed  by  the  advocates  of  both  opinions, 
but  is  in  any  case,  by  itself,  of  little  worth.  The  character  of 


CH.  xvr.  THE   TRACHINI&.  295 

Deianira  can  only  be  compared  with  that  of  Tecmessa,  a 
second-rate  character  in  the  Ajax,  and  differs  completely  from 
the  poet's  so-called  heroines.  But  there  is  the  deepest  pathos 
in  his  drawing  of  a  feeble,  patient  wife,  ever  widowed  afresh 
for  weary  months,  and  now  too  exiled  from  her  home  and 
seeking  in  vain  for  tidings  of  her  husband.  His  enforced 
absence  (to  atone  for  a  homicide),  his  careful  disposition  of  his 
affairs  before  he  departed,  and  the  vague  voice  of  old  oracles, 
all  conspire  to  fill  her  heart  with  sorrow  and  despondency. 
The  aged  nurse  suggests  the  sending  out  of  Hyllus  to  obtain 
news,  and  after  a  short  dialogue,  in  which  he  repeats  the  vague 
reports  of  his  father's  return  to  Eubcea,  and  his  mother  cites 
with  fear  the  threatening  oracles  about  this  very  place,  the 
chorus  of  Trachinian  maidens  enters,  and  in  a  very  beautiful 
ode  to  Helios,  prays  for  tidings  of  the  wandering  hero.  De- 
ianira's  weariness  of  life  saddens  her  first  address  to  the  chorus, 
whose  virgin  days  of  security  she  envies,  while  she  reflects  on 
the  cares  of  married  life.1 

Then  comes  a  self-appointed  messenger,  who  has  hurried 
in  advance  of  Lichas,  and  tells  her  of  Heracles'  victory,  and  the 
momentary  delay  of  the  herald,  who  presently  enters  with  the 
spoils  and  slaves  from  CEchalia,  and  gives  his  account  to  De- 
ianira. But  she  is  chiefly  struck  by  the  beauty  of  a  fair  captive, 
concerning  whose  history  and  parentage  she  inquires,  both  from 
Lichas,  who  answers  evasively,  and  from  the  girl  herself,  who 
preserves  absolute  silence.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  tender- 
ness and  grace  of  this  passage.2  It  contrasts  strongly  with 


1  vv.  140-50  :  ireirvfffjifvr)  fJ-fv,  us  ffdty1  fiKaffat,  irdpei 
Trd9r)/J.a  rov^v  '  ws  5  e-ycb  Ov/J.oif>8opu 
p.'flT'  fKfJ.ddois  iraQovffa,  vvv  8'  &ireipos  e?. 
rb  yap  vfd^ov  tv  Toto^crSe  pSffKerai 
jfdipoiffiv  O.UTOV,  /ecu  viv  ov  6d\iros  9eov, 
ouS'  0(U/3pos,  ouSe  Trvfvfj.dr<av  ovSfv  K\ove'it 
a\\  •tjfiovcus  afAoxQov  f^atpsi  fiiov 
e's  rovd\  ecas  TIS  avrl  Trap6fvov  yvvrj 
K\ridfj,  \d0rj  T'  ev  vvtcrl  <ppofrl5ci>v  /ue'pos. 

This  sentiment   reappears    in    frag.   517    of  the  poet,    and  also  in 
Euripides. 

*  vv.  294-334. 


296  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

the  imperious  harshness  of  Clytemnestra  to  the  captive  Cassan- 
dra, and  may  possibly  have  been  composed  with  this  inten- 
tion. But  the  first  messenger,  who  has  heard  the  gossip  of  the 
town,  and  is  eager  to  make  himself  important,  comes  forward 
again,  as  soon  as  Lfchas  has  entered  the  palace,  and  with  that 
love  of  telling  bad  news  which  infects  the  lower  classes,  informs 
the  queen  of  the  real  truth  about  lole.  The  scene  in  which 
Deianira  extracts  the  confirmation  of  the  report  from  the  un- 
willing Lichas,  when  he  reappears,  is  one  of  the  finest  in  the 
tragedy.  The  largeness  of  heart  with  which  the  wife  treats  her 
husband's  passion  for  another  woman  is  far  more  splendid 
than  the  heroism  of  harder  women  on  matters  that  cannot 
touch  them  so  deeply. l  We  must  remember  that  we  are  read- 
ing of  Greek  heroic  times  and  manners,  when  such  license 
was  freely  accorded  to  princes,  and  when  the  attachment  to 
lole,  though  a  great  hardship  to  the  wife,  would  never  have 
been  regarded  as  a  breach  of  good  morals.  When,  therefore, 
some  critics  have  sought  the  tragic  justice  of  the  play  in 
Heracles'  punishment  for  conjugal  faithlessness,  they  have 
merely  talked  irrelevant  nonsense.  There  is  no  finer  conclusion 
of  a  fine  scene  than  the  chorus  which  follows,  and  which 
describes  the  desperate  conflict  of  Heracles  for  the  possession 
of  this  very  Deianira,  who  is  now  slighted  and  forgotten. 
Then  follows  the  hasty  resolve  of  the  wife  to  recover  her  hus- 
band by  the  potent  charm  of  Nessus'  garment,  her  fear  and 
forebodings  when  she  finds,  after  it  is  sent,  that  the  wool  with 
which  she  had  laid  on  the  unguent  had  been  consumed  when 
heated  by  the  sun.  She  anticipates  the  whole  catastrophe,  and 
is  now  as  clear  sighted  as  she  was  formerly  dull  of  inference. 
Then  comes  the  terrible  news  by  Hyllus,  and  his  fierce  accusa- 
tion of  his  mother,  who  rushes  in  the  silence  of  desperate  resolve 
from  the  stage.  After  an  interrupting  chorus,  her  death-scene 
is  affectingly  described,  so  affectingly  as  almost  to  rival  the  death 
-'of  Alcestis  in  Euripides. 

1  Elle  ne  s'irrite  ni  centre  sa  rivale  ni  centre  1'homme  qui  la  trahit :  sa 
douleur  est  celle  d'une  epouse,  et  non  pas  d'une  amante,  et  cette  nuance, 
qu'on  a  peine  a  exprimer,  est  indiquee  par  le  poete  avec  une  exquise  deli- 
catesse.— Patin,  Sophocle,  p.  73. 


CH.  xvi.         CHARACTER  OF  DEIANIRA.  297 

Here  the  main  interest  in  the  piece  ends  for  moderns ;  and 
I  may  observe,  before  passing  on,  that  it  is  hardly  creditable  to 
the  critics  that  they  have  not  better  appreciated  so  noble  and 
natural  a  character.  Deianira  is  a  woman  made  to  suffer  and 
to  endure,  who  submits  to  a  hard  fate  with  patience  and  sweet- 
ness, but  whose  love  is  strong,  and  will  not  waver  with  the 
rudest  shocks.  When  she  sees  a  growing  beauty  brought  into 
the  home  in  which  years  and  anxieties  have  caused  her  own 
charms  to  decay,  she  has  recourse  to  a  remedy  ordinary  in 
those  days,  and  approved  by  the  maidens  who  befriend  her. 
And  yet  this  device  of  the  gentle,  uncomplaining  wife  lets 
loose  a  terrific  agency  which  robs  all  Greece  of  its  greatest 
benefactor,  and  the  human  race  of  its  proudest  hero.  The 
oracle  must  indeed  be  fulfilled ;  Heracles  must  die,  but  with 
what  tragic  irony  !  The  wretched  worker  of  the  catastrophe 
wanders  for  a  while  through  the  house,  amazed,  aimless,  heart- 
broken, bursting  into  tears  at  every  familiar  face  and  object, 
then  with  sudden  resolve  she  bares  her  side,  and  strikes  the 
sword  into  her  heart ! 

But  among  the  ancients,  the  official  catastrophe,  the  lyrical 
wailing  of  Heracles,  his  wrestling  with  agony,  and  final  victory, 
his  calm  review  of  his  life — all  this  was  far  more  celebrated  and 
striking.  Such  lyrical  dialogues,  when  the  excited  actor  spoke 
in  turn  with  the  chorus,  were  highly  prized  on  the  Greek  stage, 
and  were  a  leading  feature  in  most  tragedies.  Cicero l  gives  us 
a  version  of  the  agony  of  Heracles,  and  there  are  many  modern 
French  versions.  Seneca  and  Ovid  have  reproduced  the 
story,  but  have  altogether  missed  the  delicacies  of  Sophocles' 
treatment.  Among  French  imitators  by  far  the  best  was 
Fenelon,  who  has  given  a  very  elegant*  prose  version  in  his 
Telemaque.  All  the  rest,  for  want  I  suppose  of  both  taste  and 
knowledge  of  Greek,  followed  Seneca's  travesty. 

§  189.  The  (Edipus  Tyrannus,  which  serves  as  a  sort  of  canon 
in  the  Poetic  of  Aristotle,  has  been  placed  by  the  scholiasts,  and 
by  most  modern  critics,  at  the  very  summit  of  Greek  tragic  art, 
and  certainly  dates  from  the  best  period  of  Sophocles'  literary 
life.  But  when  some  exercise  their  ingenuity  in  suggesting 

1   Tusc.  ii.  8-9. 
13* 


298  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

that  the  opening  scene  was  painted  from  the  horrors  of  the 
plague  at  Athens,  and  that  by  OEdipus  the  poet  means  to  con- 
vey the  failure  of  Pericles,  and  his  melancholy  death,  they  seem 
to  have  actually  found  the  one  impossible  date  for  the  play.  The 
Lacedaemonians,  in  opening  the  war,  had  demanded  from  Athens 
the  exile  of  Pericles,  as  blood-guilty  through  his  ancestors  in  the 
massacre  of  the  Kylonians,  and  had  affected  to  make  the  refusal 
their  casus  belli.  To  bring  out  the  CEdipus  t  when  this  demand, 
and  the  plague  which  shortly  after  ensued,  were  still  fresh  in 
men's  minds,  would  not  only  have  been  a  profound  disloyalty  to 
the  Athenian  cause,  and  a  justification  of  Sparta,  but  a  direct 
personal  attack  on  the  memory  of  Pericles.  We  know  that 
Sophocles,  of  all  Athenians,  was  most  free  from  personal  ani- 
mosities, and  we  have  also  reason  to  think  he  was  a  friend  of 
Pericles.  This  period,  therefore,  of  the  poet's  life  is  the  only 
one  at  which  the  OEdipus  cannot  have  been  brought  out 

It  may  perhaps  rather  be  referred  to  an  earlier  period,  when 
sceptical  opinions,  and  especially  a  contempt  of  oracles,  came 
into  fashion  with  the  rising  generation  during  the  supremacy  of 
Athens.  The  moral  lesson  conveyed  is  distinctly  the  im- 
portance of  oracles  and  prophecies,  which  interpret  to  men 
the  secret  and  inexplicable  ways  of  Providence,  and  the  awful, 
nay,  to  us  disproportionate,  vengeance  which  ensues  upon  their 
neglect.  This  apparent  injustice  is  even  vindicated  as  being 
the  necessary  course  of  the  world  appointed  by  its  ruler,  Zeus 
• — in  fact,  by  an  appeal  to  religious,  as  distinguished  from 
moral,  laws. 

The  progress  of  the  play  is  so  well  known  that  I  will  only 
notice  its  perfections  and  defects  from  a  critical  point  of  view. 
Nothing  can  be  nobler  and  more  natural  than  the  opening 
dialogue  of  CEdipus  and  the  priest,  and  in  this,  and  the  short 
scene  when  Creon  appears  with  the  answer  of  the  oracle,  the 
character  of  CEdipus,  as  an  able,  benevolent,  but  somewhat 
self-conscious  man,  is  laid  clearly  before  us.  The  old  objec- 
tion, why  the  murder  of  Laius  had  never  been  before  investi- 
gated, may  be  coupled  with  another,  why  the  plague  had 
been  so  long  delayed,  seeing  that  the  cause  of  it  existed  since 
CEdipus  had  come  to  Thebes.  These  difficulties  are,  however, 


CH.  XVI.  THE   CEDIPVS  REX.  299 

not  objections  to  the  play,  but  to  the  supposed  antecedents 
of  the  play,  though  they  are  real  objections.  Sophocles 
would  probably  have  answered  them  by  saying  that  he 
sought  a  dramatic  situation  in  which  to  develop  the  character 
of  his  hero,  and  that  he  despised  such  inquiries  into  an- 
tecedent probabilities.  But  unnatural  assumptions  cannot 
enter  a  work  of  art  with  impunity,  and  nature  will  avenge 
herself  upon  the  artist,  however  great,  as  we  shall  see  in 
the  sequel  of  this  very  play.  The  choral  hymn  to  Apollo,  as 
the  healer,  which  follows,  is  among  the  finest  of  Sophocles' 
choral  odes.  Indeed,  if  we  except  the  second  (Edipus,  the 
choruses  of  this  play  are  much  grander  than  is  usual  with 
Sophocles  ;  and  this  is  attributable  to  the  character  of  the 
chorus,  which  here,  if  anywhere,  is  the  ideal  spectator,  though 
not  without  some  touches  of  vulgar  complaisance.1  But  the 
principal  character  maintains  an  importance  so  much  higher 
than  in  Sophocles'  other  plays,  that  the  chorus  assumes  the  purer 
function  of  observing  the  action,  rather  than  that  of  encouraging 
or  deprecating  the  hero's  sentiments. 

Passing  by  the  imprecation  scene,  which  has  greatly  benefited 
by  Ribbeck's  transposition  of  a  few  lines,2  we  come  to  the  unwil- 
ling appearance  of  Teiresias,  the  impatience  of  QEdipus,  and  a 
consequent  angry  wrangle,  in  which  the  outspokenness  of  the 
prophet  seems  to  me  a  great  flaw  in  a  play  so  much  admired  for 
the  gradual  development  of  the  plot.  Teiresias  tells  him  so  ex- 
plicitly that  he  is  the  murderer  of  Laius,  and  is  the  husband  of 
his  mother,  that  a  man  who  knew  his  Corinthian  parentage  was 
doubtful,  that  an  oracle  had  predicted  to  him  these  very  crimes, 
and  that  he  had  committed  a  homicide,  could  not  but  hit  upon 
the  truth.  In  fact  he  does  so  presently  at  a  far  less  obvious  sug- 
gestion of  locasta's.  The  excuse  for  this  defect  is,  I  suppose, 
that  CEdipus  was  in  a  rage  when  Teiresias  discloses  the  facts, 
and  that  his  rage  makes  him  perfectly  blind.  But  this  seems 
to  me  too  artificial  an  answer  to  the  objection,  though  it  has  been 
urged  as  a  subtle  psychological  point,  that  the  same  man  who 
cannot  perceive  the  plainest  indications  in  the  heat  of  dispute, 

1  Cf.  Patin,  Sophode,  p.  183. 

2  vv.  252-72  before  v.  246  ;  cf.  Bernhardy,  LG.  iii.  p.  355. 


300  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvi. 

when  he  calms  down,  fastens  on  a  trivial  detail  in  friendly  con- 
versation, and  starting  from  it,  unravels  for  himself  the  whole 
mystery.  The  spectator  is  hurried  on  by  the  angry  violence 
of  QEdipus,  who  turns  accuser  instead  of  defendant,  and 
roundly  charges  both  Teiresias  and  Creon  with  being  the  real 
murderers  of  Laius,  and  accomplices  in  seeking  to  oust 
from  the  kingdom  its  rightful  lord.  But  surely  here  the 
antecedent  improbabilities  assert  themselves  with  irrefragable 
force.  If  the  murder  of  Laius  and  the  present  events  were  in- 
deed twenty  years  apart,  the  charge  of  CEdipus  becomes 
ridiculous.  The  ambitious  claimants  for  the  throne  murder 
Laius,  and  then  rest  silent  for  twenty  years,  when  they  vamp  up 
a  charge  of  the  murder  against  his  long- established  successor  ! 
The  matter  will  not  bear  the  light  of  common  sense,  unless  we 
conceive  the  murder  followed  closely  by  the  accession  of  CEdipus, 
the  plague,  and  the  threatening  oracle.  But  here  the  legend 
which  gives  time  for  the  birth  of  four  children  seems  to  interpose 
an  impassable  barrier.  The  important  tragic  point  to  be  noted 
in  this  dispute  is  that  the  violence  of  CEdipus,  and  especially 
his  sneers  at  the  venerable  and  respected  soothsayer,  are  meant 
to  palliate  our  sense  of  horror  at  the  extremity  of  his  punishment. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  locasta,  whose  feeble  and  shallow 
scepticism  is  with  great  skill  represented  by  the  poet  as  failing 
in  the  hour  of  terror  and  of  need.  Her  account  of  the  death 
of  Laius,  intended  to  soothe  CEdipus,  is  so  framed  as  to  stir  up 
his  deepest  mind  with  agitation,  and  that,  too,  by  means  of  an 
apparently  trifling  detail  Even  though  the  plain  speaking  of 
Teiresias  had  more  than  prepared  us,  this  passage  is  of  the 
greatest  dramatic  beauty.  Indeed,  these  double  confidences  of 
the  husband  and  wife  form  a  scene  which  has  perhaps  not  been 
equalled  of  its  kind.  The  result  is  now  plain  before  CEdipus' 
mind,  yet  he  and  locasta  cling  to  the  faint  hopes  arising 
from  false  details  of  the  murder.  It  is  very  remarkable  that 
the  chorus,  here  rising  above  the  special  situation,  sings  a 
solemn  ode l  upon  the  insolence  and  folly  of  scepticism, 
and  the  decay  of  belief  in  the  old  tenets  of  religion.  At  its 
close  locasta  appears,  bearing  suppliant  offerings  to  the  god 
1  w.  860-910. 


CH.  xvi.  THE  CEDIPUS  REX.  301 

whose  oracles  she  has  just  despised,  but  to  whom  she  turns  in 
dismay  at  the  mental  agony  of  her  husband,  for  which  she  can 
find  no  remedy. 

The  appearance  of  the  messenger  announcing  the  death 
of  Polybus  seems  too  late  in  the  play,  and  the  sudden  return  of 
CEdipus  to  confidence  on  this  point  a  mistake.  He  had  long 
ago  doubted  his  alleged  origin,  and  the  previous  course  of 
the  play  had  so  confirmed  these  doubts,  that  his  easy  accep- 
tance of  the  solution  is  not  natural,  and  is  a  flaw  in  the  work. 
At  an  earlier  period,  and  just  after  the  warnings  of  Teiresias, 
we  may  fancy  such  a  delay  in  the  catastrophe  better  placed. 
But  the  intention  of  the  poet  is  here  to  approach  the  second 
crime  of  CEdipus,  his  incestuous  marriage,  and  he  approaches 
it  with  the  somewhat  ridiculous  fears  of  CEdipus  that  he 
may  unwittingly  marry  the  aged  Merope,  whom  he  knows 
perfectly  well.  This  leads  to  the  final  explanation  of  his 
birth,  and  presently  of  the  details  of  his  father's  murder, 
which  the  Corinthian  messenger,  the  aged  shepherd,  and  the 
king  discover  in  a  dialogue  of  awful  and  breathless  interest.  I 
will  only  notice  from  the  end  of  the  play  that  the  character  of 
Creon  is  that  of  a  calm  and  just  ruler,  far  different  from  his 
figure  in  the  Antigone,  and  also  that  in  his  lamentations 
CEdipus  lays  great  and  natural  stress  on  the  indelible  stain 
which  adheres  to  his  daughters,  and  which  will  make  their 
marriage  impossible — a  consideration  never  mentioned,  I  think, 
in  the  Antigone.  This  proves,  if  it  be  necessary  to  prove  it,  the 
complete  independence  of  these  plays,  which  critics  are  always 
citing  in  connection,  when  they  discuss  the  characters  of 
Sophocles,  and  wish  to  explain  the  unresolved  harshness  of  his 
morality.  The  concluding  scene  with  his  infant  daughters  is 
very  affecting,  but  thoroughly  Euripidean,  and  may  be  intended 
to  introduce  the  softer  element  of  pity  where  terror  too  much 
predominates. 

Indeed,  the  whole  play  is  a  terrible  exhibition  of  the  iron 
course  of  Fate,  which  ensnares  even  great  and  good  men  in 
its  adamantine  chains,  and  ruins  the  highest  human  prosperity 
with  calm  omnipotence.  There  can  be  no  crime  urged  against 
CEdipus  and  his  parents  but  the  neglect  of  oracles,  cr  an 


302  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XVI. 

attempt  to  evade  them,  and  it  is  evidently  this  scepticism  or 
carelessness  which  brings  upon  them  consequences  too  horrible 
to  bear.  I  do  not  think  that  the  haughtiness  of  QEdipus — a 
feature  which  the  Greeks  did  not  consider  inconsistent  with  an 
ideal  character — has  any  direct  relation  to  the  catastrophe,  and 
the  homicide  was  evidently  regarded  not  as  an  act  of  violence, 
but  of  fair  retaliation,  until  the  person  of  the  victim  throws 
a  horrible  complexion  over  the  act,  and  makes  it  a  hideous 
crime.  After  all,  CEdipus  is  but  the  plaything  of  an  awful 
destiny ;  he  surfers  without  adequate  evil  desert ;  and  the  lesson 
of  the  play  is  not  that  of  confidence  in  the  final  result  of  a 
great  moral  struggle,  but  rather  of  awe  and  despair  at  the  possible 
cruelties  of  an  arbitrary  and  irresponsible  Fate. 

It  may  have  been  this  grave  objection,  it  may  have 
been  its  orthodoxy,  or  it  may  have  been'  the  defects  of  plot 
above  noticed,  which  caused  its  defeat  by  a  play  of  Philocles, 
or  brought  out  by  Philocles,  the  nephew  of  ^Eschylus, 
at  the  same  time.  Subsequent  criticism  has  reversed  this 
decision.  Not  only  is  the  very  name  of  Philocles'  play  for- 
gotten, but  the  scholiasts  and  other  critics  express  their  wonder 
at  the  bad  taste  of  the  Athenian  public,  and  exhaust  themselves 
in  praise  of  the  CEdipus  Tyrannus.  Seneca  spoilt  it  in  a 
rhetorical  version.  Among  the  moderns,  both  Corneille  (1659) 
and  Voltaire  composed  plays  on  this  subject,  not  to  speak  of 
inferior  attempts.  Corneille  added  amorous  and  poetical  in- 
trigues, and  borrowed  rather  from  Seneca  than  from  Sophocles. 
Voltaire  degraded  it  into  a  formal  attack  on  the  justice  and  wis- 
dom of  the  gods — in  fact,  a  vehicle  for  the  scepticism  which  he 
preached.  Many  faults  of  economy  in  his  play,  which  dis- 
satisfied him  as  an  early  and  crude  production,  have  been 
noticed  by  his  own  Lettres.  The  CEdipus  of  Dryden  and  Lee, 
given  in  1679,  is  one  of  the  few  adaptations  of  the  Greek  drama 
upon  the  English  stage,  fortunately  preoccupied  by  an  indi- 
genous growth.  Dryden's  play  does  not  avoid  any  of  the 
faults  of  the  French  stage — pompousness,  needless  complication, 
irrelevant  love  affairs,  false  rhetoric — and  is,  moreover,  said  to 
have  added  some  of  those  to  be  found  in  his  own  country. 

§  190.  A  very  different  picture  is  presented  to  us  by  the 


CH.  xvi.         THE  (EDIPUS  AT  COLON  US.  303 

(Edipus  at  Colonus,  wherein  the  poet,  probably  in  later  years, 
seems  to  have  softened  and  purified  the  figure  of  the  deeply 
injured  hero  by  a  noble  and  dignified  end.  We  know  that  the 
play  was  not  exhibited  till  four  years  after  Sophocles'  death,  and 
tradition  speaks  of  it  as  the  last  composed  by  the  old  man  ; 
but  later  critics  seem  more  disposed  to  place  its  composition 
in  the  best  period  of  his  life.1  I  hardly  think  their  arguments, 
based  on  its  purity  of  metre  and  strength  of  diction,  will  weigh 
against  the  current  tradition,  backed  up  by  the  strong  feeling 
of  every  reader  from  Cicero  to  our  day,  that  its  mildness 
and  sadness,  nay  even  its  weariness  of  life,  speak  the  long 
experience  and  sober  resignation  of  an  old  man  near  the 
grave.  The  choral  odes  are,  however,  far  more  brilliant  and 
prominent  than  those  of  the  Philoctetes,  whose  late  date  is  un- 
doubted, and  indeed  the  chorus  holds  a  sort  of  ^Eschylean 
position  in  the  play.  The  lyrical  writing,  especially  in  the 
choral  odes  on  Colonus,  and  on  the  miseries  of  human  life,  may 
safely  be  pronounced  the  most  perfect  we  possess  of  the  poet's 
remains.  Nevertheless,  the  moral  attitude  of  the  chorus  in  the 
action  is  low  and  selfish.  Their  attempt  to  break  faith  with 
OEdipus,  their  vulgar  obtrusiveness  about  his  past  history, 
and  the  rapid  change  in  their  estimate  of  him,  when  they 
find  he  will  be  useful  to  them — all  these  features  mark  the 
vulgar  public  which  ordinarily  appears  in  the  Greek  tragic 
chorus.  The  play  may  be  composed  with  some  reference  to 
the  earlier  CEdipus,  at  least  with  the  intention  of  soften- 
ing the  cruel  treatment  of  (Edipus,  which  is  there  portrayed. 
Though  worn  out  with  age  and  suffering,  there  is  a  splendid 
dignity  about  him,  a  consciousness  of  innocence,  an  oft-ex- 
pressed conviction  that  he  did  all  his  so-called  crimes  un- 
wittingly, and  without  moral  guilt,  and  that  he  is  justified  by 
the  important  mission  assigned  him  by  the  gods — that  of  pro- 

1  There  have  been  endless  discussions  as  to  the  date,  and  efforts  to 
deduce  it  from  the  political  temper  of  the  play,  and  its  very  friendly  allu- 
sions to  Thebes.  But  according  as  this  or  that  line  is  declared  spurious, 
or  this  or  that  passage  interpolated,  the  theories  vary,  and  the  doctors 
differ.  The  main  result  of  the  controversy  is  to  show  that  no  result  is 
attainable. 


304  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xvi. 

tecting  for  ever  the  land  which  affords  him  a  hallowed  resting- 
place.  He  even  approaches  with  assurance  and  without  fear  the 
dread  Eumenides,  whom  others  will  scarcely  name,  and  whose 
grove  men  hurry  by  with  averted  face.  This  spiritual  great- 
ness separates  the  dying  CEdipus  widely  from  King  Lear,  with 
whom  he  is  often  compared.  But  in  his  violent  and  painful 
execration  of  his  ungrateful  but  repentant  son — a  jarring  chord 
in  the  sweet  harmony  of  the  play — he  reminds  us  of  the  angry 
old  man  in  Shakespeare,  though  still  more  of  his  vehement 
and  haughty  self  in  the  CEdipus  Tyrannus.  But  Creon  is 
here  changed,  and  represented  in  his  low  and  insolent  type, 
as  in  the  Antigone.  This  heroine,  also,  is  not  consistently 
drawn,  and  does  not  here  manifest  the  strong  features  which 
Sophocle.3  had  given  her  in  his  early  play.  These  points  show 
how  little  the  Athenian  public  cared  to  compare  the  plays  of 
different  years,  and  how  little  they  attached  a  fixed  type  of 
character  to  mythic  names.  It  was  possibly  on  account  of 
these  liberties  that  the  tragic  poets  avoided  as  a  rule  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey,  for  in  a  play  derived  from  them  any  marked  de- 
viation might,  perhaps,  have  offended  a  public  really  familiar 
with  their  texts. 

The  episode  of  Polynices,  though  it  delays  the  main  action 
of  the  play,  is  singularly  striking  from  the  contrast  it  affords  to 
the  position  of  CEdipus.  Both  father  and  son  are  approaching 
their  fate,  but  the  father,  an  innocent  offender,  and  purified  by 
long  suffering,  shines  out  in  the  majesty  of  a  glorious  sunset 
after  a  stormy  day  ;  while  the  son,  who  violated  his  filial  duties 
through  selfishness  and  hardness  of  heart,  is  promptly  punished 
by  exile  ;  but  even  when  apparently  repentant,  and  seeking 
forgiveness  for  his  offence,  the  leaven  of  ambition  and  revenge 
has  so  poisoned  his  heart,  that  when  stricken  by  his  father's 
awful  curse,  he  rushes  upon  his  doom,  partly  in  despair,  partly 
in  contumacy,  partly  from  vanity  and  a  fear  of  ridicule  : 

'  His  honour  rooted  in  dishonour  stood, 
And  faith  unfaithful  kept  him  falsely  true.' 

It  is  this  combined  insincerity  and  desperation  in  Polynices 
which  alone  can  justify  the  violence  of  CEdipus'  curse,  and  even 


CH.xvi.  THE  CEDIPUS  OF  COLONUS.  305 

so  it  is  a  painful  prelude  to  his  solemn  translation  to  the  nether 
world. 

Nothing  at  first  sight  can  appear  to  modern  notions  more 
monotonous  than  the  way  in  which  (Edipus  fixes  himself  to 
the  single  spot  which  he  will  not  leave,  while  all  the  other 
characters  pass  in  succession  before  him.     But  nothing  could 
be  more  pathetic  or  striking  to  the  Greek  mind  than  these 
divers  efforts  to  subdue  or  persuade  the  inflexible  old  man, 
whom  the  divine  curse  has  hardened  in  his  wrath.       The 
changing  scenes  give  endless  variety  to  the  monotony  of  the 
situation,  or  rather  of  the  main  figure,  whose   very  monotony 
is   his   greatness,  because  it  expresses  the  endurance  of  his 
misfortunes  and  of  his  hate.1     In  the  finest  and  truest  Eng- 
lish reproduction  of  Greek  tragedy — the  Samson  Agonistes  of 
Milton — Samson,  who  has  great  points  of  resemblance  with 
CZdipus,  occupies  a  similar  fixed  position,  while  the  vari- 
ous  actors  pass  before   him.     The   episode   of  Dalila   takes 
the    place   of   the    scene   with    Polynices,   and    brings    out 
the  angry  element  in  Samson.     There  are,   however,   many 
other    Greek    plays,  and    many  ^Eschylean  and   Euripidean 
features,  imitated  in  the  Samson,  though  all  these  materials 
are  fused  into    harmony  with    a    great    poet's  highest  art. 
The  commas  of  the   sisters   after  his    departure    is    the   es- 
sentially Greek  feature  of  the  play,  which   a   modern  writer 
would  omit,  but  which  is  formed  closely  upon  the  model  of 
the  end  of  ^Eschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes.     But  on  the  whole, 
for  vigour,   for  variety,   and   for  poetic  beauty,   no   play  of 
Sophocles  exceeds  this   (Edipus,  and  I  am  even  disposed  to 
agree  with   those  who  rank  it  tte  first  of  his  dramas.      As, 
however,  each  new  critic  makes  this  assertion  about  a  different 
play,  it  is  idle  to  attempt  a  decision. 

The  essentially  antique  nature  of  the  tragedy,  its  special 
glorification  of  Theseus,  of  Athens,  of  Colonus,  made  it  less  fit 
than  others,  as  M.  Patin  observes,  for  modern  imitation. 
Nevertheless,  in  1778,  long  after  the  other  chefs (Pceuvre  of  the 
Greek  drama  had  been  imitated  or  travestied  on  the  French 
stage,  Ducis  brought  out  his  (Edipe  chez  Admtie,  a  sort  of  com- 
1  Cf.  Villemain,  Litt.  du  xviii  "  silcle,  iii.  p.  312. 


306  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVI. 

bination  of  the  (Edipus  Coloneus  with  Euripides'  Alcestis,  which 
seems  as  much  imitated  from  King  Lear  as  from  (Edipus,  and 
misses  the  perfections  of  both.  An  abridged  and  altered  version 
appeared  in  1797  under  the  exact  title  of  the  Greek  play. 
There  was,  moreover,  an  opera  on  the  same  subject,  with 
music  by  Sacchini,  brought  out  in  1787.  An  imitation  by 
Chenier,  which  is  not  much  praised  by  the  critics,  and  one  by 
the  Italian  Niccolini,  who  translated  some  of  ^Eschylus'  plays, 
are  the  most  important  modern  attempts  in  this  special  field. 
In  all  the  French  imitations  the  Christianity  of  the  writers  was 
so  shocked  by  the  relentless  cursing  of  Polynices  by  CEdipus, 
that  they  reject  this  feature,  and  introduce  a  scene  of  forgive- 
ness, which  the  gods,  however,  will  not  ratify.  The  worship  of 
old  Greek  poetry  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  as  inaccurate  as 
the  worship  of  Greek  architecture.  In  both  the  results  were  at- 
tempted without  any  real  knowledge  of  the  principles  involved, 
or  of  the  spirit  which  produced  every  detail  in  strict  harmony 
with  the  original  design,  and  for  some  definite  purpose  beyond 
mere  ornament. 

§  191.  In  variety  and  richness  the  play  just  considered  con- 
trasts strongly  with  the  Ajax,  which  stands  perhaps  more  re- 
mote than  any  of  Sophocles'  works  from  modern  notions.1  If 
a  modern  dramatist  were  told  to  compose  a  play  upon  such  a 
subject — the  madness  of  a  hero  from  disappointed  ambition, 
the  carnage  of  flocks  of  sheep  in  mistake  for  his  rivals  and 
judges,  his  return  to  sanity,  remorse  and  suicide,  and  a  quarrel 
about  his  funeral — he  would,  I  suppose,  despair  of  the  materials  ; 
and  yet  Sophocles  has  composed  one  of  his  greatest  character 
plays  upon  it.  There  is  no  finer  psychological  picture  than  the 
awakening  of  Ajax  from  his  rage,  his  deep  despair,  his  firm 
resolve  to  endure  life  no  longer,  his  harsh  treatment  of 
Tecmessa,  and  yet  his  deep  love  for  her  and  his  child.  Even 
his  suicide  is  most  exceptionally  put  upon  the  stage,  for  the 
purpose,  I  think,  of  the  most  splendid  monologue  which 
Greek  tragedy  affords  us.  He  is  for  one  day,  we  are  told, 
under  the  anger  of  Athene,  and  if  he  can  escape  it,  he  will  be 

1  The  interesting  parallel  of  the  Hercules  Furens  of  Euripides  will 
come  under  discussion  in  the  chapter  on  that  poet. 


CH.  XVL  THE  AJAX.  307 

safe,  and  this  inspires  the  spectator  with  a  peculiar  tragic  pity, 
when  he  sees  a  great  life  lost,  which  might  so  easily  have  been 
saved.  But  the  action  of  Athene  is  not  otherwise  of  import- 
ance in  the  play.  She  appears  not  at  the  end  (as  usual),  but 
only  at  the  opening,  and  in  those  hard  and  cruel  features 
which  are  familiar  to  us  in  Homer. l  Thus  in  this  play  also, 
religion  and  morals  are  dissociated,  no  doubt  unconsciously, 
by  the  tragic  poet,  who  sought  to  be  a  moral  teacher  of  his 
people.  This  momentary  introduction  of  gods  at  the  open- 
ing and  close  of  tragedies  shows  plainly  the  process  of 
humanization  which  was  completed  by  Euripides,  and  which 
made  the  gods  a  mere  piece  of  stage  machinery,  tolerated 
by  tradition,  but  only  to  be  called  in  when  the  web  of  human 
passion  required  prompt  and  clear  explication.  But  in  old 
Greek  plays  they  furthermore  performed  the  important  tragic 
service  of  justifying  the  cruel  side,  the  iron  destiny,  of  the 
drama.  They  were  the  main  agents  in  purifying  the  terror 
of  the  spectator,  which  had  else  been  akin  to  despair  at  the 
miseries  entailed  by  necessity  upon  the  human  race. 

As  regards  the  haughty,  unyielding  character  of  Ajax,  I 
cannot  agree  with  the  critics  that  the  poet  meant  to  regard 
his  pride  as  justly  punished,  and  meant  to  show  that  brute 
force  must  succumb  to  a  heroism  tempered  by  wisdom  and 
forethought.  This  would  be  to  assume  that  the  Ajax  of  the 
play  was  the  hero  of  the  Iliad,  which  is  not  the  case. 
Sophocles'  Ajax  is  not  the  least  wanting  in  refinement,  or  in 
sensitiveness,  nay,  his  appeal  to  all  the  cairn  beauty  of  nature 
around  him,  in  contrast  to  his  own  misery,  his  undisguised 
lamentations  and  despair,  show  a  mind  which  steels  itself  with 
effort  to  a  high  resolve,  and  which  does  not  possess  the  brute 
courage  of  insensibility.  Moreover,  he  consistently  considers 
himself  unjustly  treated,  and  would  never  acquiesce  in  the  fair- 
ness either  of  the  decision  of  the  Atridae  or  of  the  persecution 
of  Athene.  And  in  this  conviction  he  draws  even  the  modern 
spectator  with  him,  far  more  the  Greek  public,  which  did  not 

1  I  am  bound  to  say  that  M.  Patin,  an  excellent  critic,  speaks  of 
Athene's  language  as  'grave  and  sublime,'  and  regards  her  as  a  lofty  ex- 
ponent of  moral  laws.  Let  the  reader  of  the  play  judge  between  us. 


3oa  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVI. 

reprove  self-assertion  except  as  dangerous  on  account  of  the 
jealousy  of  the  gods.  The  inferiority  of  Odysseus  in  perso- 
nal courage  is  brought  out  pointedly  in  the  very  first  scene, 
but  at  the  same  time  his  prudence  and  his  favour  with  the 
gods.  His  appearance  at  the  end  of  the  play  is  calm  and 
dignified,  but  having  obtained  a  complete  victory  over  his 
rival,  we  feel  that  his  generosity,  though  just  what  it  ought  to 
be,  is  cheap,  and  consists  merely  in  the  absence  of  vindictiveness. 
The  whole  of  the  wrangling  scene  between  the  Atridse  and 
Teucer  concerning  the  burial  of  Ajax,  is  very  inferior  to  the 
earlier  part  of  the  play,  is  called  '  rather  comic '  by  the  scholiast, 
and  is  certainly  open  to  all  the  criticism  brought  against  the 
wrangling  scenes  in  Euripides.  Some  critics  even  think  it  the 
addition  of  an  inferior  hand  to  an  unfinished  play  of  Sophocles. 
But  this  is  mere  random  effort  to  save  the  uniform  greatness  of 
a  poet,  who  was  known  by  the  ancients  to  be  unequal,  and 
often  to  sink  to  an  ordinary  level.  The  Atridse  are  drawn  as 
vulgar  tyrants,  and  without  any  redeeming  feature.  It  was  of 
course  fashionable,  in  democratic  Athens,  to  make  every  ab- 
solute ruler  a  villain,  so  much  so  that  respectable  actors  would 
not  play  such  ungrateful  parts.  The  Tecmessa  of  the  play  is  a 
patient,  loving  woman,  almost  as  tragic  as  Andromache,  who 
attracts  the  reader  from  the  outset,  and  seems  to  me  far  more 
interesting,  and  more  natural,  than  the  poet's  fierce  and  wran- 
gling heroines.  The  choral  odes  are  not  very  striking,  if  we 
except  a  beautiful  hyporcheme  to  Pan.1  The  chorus  is 
throughout  the  confidant  of  Tecmessa,  and  by  their  conversa- 
tions the  action  is  artfully  disclosed  ;  they  are  also  the  affec- 
tionate followers  of  Ajax,  though  they  do  not  forget  that  their 
personal  safety  depends  upon  him.  The  praise  of  Salamis,  and 
the  glory  of  a  hero  from  whom  the  proudest  Athenians  claimed 
descent,  were  collateral  features  likely  to  recommend  the  play  to 
an  Athenian  audience. 

The  story  of  the  suicide  of  Ajax,   though  alluded  to  in 

the    Odyssey,  when  Odysseus   encounters   the  shade  of  the 

hero  in  the  nether  world,2  was  boirowed  by  Sophocles  from 

the  Little  Iliad   of  Lesches.     It  had  already  afforded  JEs- 

1  w.  692,  sq.  2  \,  541-64. 


CH.  xvi.  THE  PHILOCTETES.  309 

chylus  the  subject  of  a  trilogy,  in  which  the  middle  piece 
described  the  suicide  in  very  different  terms,  laying  special 
stress  on  the  supposed  invulnerability  except  in  a  single  spot, 
which  his  evil  fate  discloses  to  him.  Sophocles,  too,  com- 
posed a  Teukros  and  an-  Eurysakes,  but,  as  was  his  custom, 
without  mutual  connection.  No  subject  was  more  attractive 
to  the  Greeks  than  this  dispute  of  Ajax  and  Odysseus. 
Besides  the  tragedies,  there  were  celebrated  pictures  of  it  by 
Timanthes  and  Parrhasius,  and  rhetorical  versions  of  it,  such 
as  that  alluded  to  in  the  tragedy  of  the  rhetor  Theodectes, 
in  Aristotle's  Rhetoric,  and  the  countless  imitations  of  Greek 
and  Roman  followers.  Ennius,  Pacuvius,  and  Attius  appear 
to  have  contaminated  ^Eschylus  with  Sophocles  in  their  ver- 
sions. A  fine  fragment  of  Pacuvius'  play  is  cited  by  Cicero.1 
Even  the  Emperor  Augustus  attempted  an  Ajax,  but  told  a 
courtly  inquirer  '  that  his  Ajax  has  fallen  upon  the  sponge/  In 
Ovid's  Metamorphoses  2  there  is  an  elegant  version,  and  both 
Horace  and  Juvenal  allude  to  it  as  the  best  known  of  sub- 
jects, both  for  moral  and  scholastic  purposes.3  There  was  a 
parody  of  the  rhetorical  exercises  in  the  Menifpea  of  Varro. 
We  may  judge  from  these  incomplete  details,  that  of  all  the 
subjects  handled  upon  the  Attic  stage,  none  was  more  widely 
popular  among  the  Romans.  The  modern  version  of  Sivry 
(1762)  is  so  ridiculous  as  to  excite  the  amusement  of  even 
French  critics.  The  reader  will  find  a  sketch  of  it  at  the  close 
of  M.  Patin's  admirable  chapter,  which  I  have  here  mainly 
followed. 

§  192.  We  close  our  list  with  the  Philoctetes,  in  which  Ger- 
man critics,  since  the  ascertainment  of  its  date  (409  B.C.),  have 
found  marks  of  decaying  power,  which  were  formerly  unknown, 
and  which  would  doubtless  be  again  ignored  if  our  information 
were  found  incorrect.  The  Philoctetes  is,  like  the  Ajax  and  the 
Antigone,  essentially  a  drama  of  character ;  the  interest  of  the 
plot  is  nothing  as  compared  to  the  study  of  the  characters  of 
Philoctetes  and  Neoptolemus.  The  whole  piece  is  Euripidean 
in  construction.  There  is  indeed  no  proper  prologue,  but  the 

1  De  Oral.  ii.  46.  *  Lib.  xii. 

3  Cf.  Sat.  ii.  3,  187,  sq.  ;  Od.  \.  7,  21  ;  ii.  4.     Juvenal,  Sat.  xiv.  283. 


3io  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XVI. 

dialogue  of  Odysseus  and  Neoptolemus,  in  which  the  formei 
explains  the  object  of  their  mission,  answers  the  purpose.  He 
tells  how  the  Greeks  on  their  way  to  Troy  had  been  obliged,  at 
his  advice,  to  leave  on  this  island  of  Lemnos,  where  the  scene 
is  laid,  the  hero  Philoctetes,  who  had  been  bitten  by  a  vipei 
in  the  foot  on  the  neighbouring  isle  of  Chrysa,  and  whose 
cries  and  execrations,  as  well  as  the  disgusting  nature  of  his 
wound,  made  him  intolerable  to  his  friends.  But  now  the  seer 
Helenus  has  foretold  that  Troy  cannot  fall  without  him  and 
his  famous  arrows  of  Heracles,  and  so  Odysseus  has  undertaken 
to  bring  him  back.  For  this  purpose  he  associates  with  him 
the  youthful  Neoptolemus.  who  had  no  share  in  the  abandon- 
ment of  Philoctetes,  and  to  whom  he  suggests  a  fictitious  account 
of  a  quarrel  with  the  Atreidae  about  Achilles'  arms,  which  had 
sent  him  home  to  Scyros  in  disgust,  as  a  suitable  means  of  en- 
.  trapping  Philoctetes  on  board,  and  carrying  him  back  to  Troy. 
Neoptolemus  protests  strongly  against  lying,  but  is  easily — 1 
think  too  easily — seduced  by  the  prospect  of  the  glorious  con- 
sequences of  his  deceit  Accordingly,  he  undertakes  his  part, 
and,  upon  Odysseus  retiring,  is  presently  hailed  with  delight  by 
Philoctetes,  whose  den  or  cave  he  had  at  the  opening  of  the 
play  already  found,  with  manifest  tokens  of  the  hero's  misery 
and  his  loathsome  disease.  A  long  series  of  mutual  con- 
fidences between  the  heroes  takes  place,  Neoptolemus  in  par- 
ticular telling  his  father's  friend  all  the  doleful  tidings  of  the 
great  heroes  who  had  fallen  before  Troy.  But  at  last  he  bids 
him  farewell,  and  is  about  to  leave  for  his  vessel,  when  Philoc- 
tetes addresses  him  with  a  very  touching  appeal  not  to  leave 
him  on  this  desolate  and  desert  island,  but  to  take  him  away 
to  his  home. 

This  celebrated  speech,  in  Sophocles'  best  style,  is  one  of 
the  great  beauties  of  the  play,  but  is  not,  I  think,  naturally 
introduced.  It  was  no  part  of  Neoptolemus'  scheme  to  seem 
hard-hearted,  or  to  treat  Philoctetes  as  anything  but  an  old 
guest-friend,  nor  can  we  see  how  his  assumed  heartlessness, 
which  is  with  difficulty  overcome  by  the  chorus,  is  in  any  way 
calculated  to  increase  the  confidence  of  his  victim.  As  they 
are  delaying  their  departure,  a  pretended  merchant  comes 


CH.  xvi.  THE  PHILOCTETES.  311 

to  tell  Neoptolemus  that  the  Greeks  have  sent  Phoenix  and 
the  Tyndaridas  to  fetch  him  back,  and  then  throws  in  by  acci- 
dent that,  according  to  the  oracle,  Diomede  and  Odysseus 
were  also  coming  for  Philoctetes.  This  urges  the  latter  to 
depart ;  but  while  returning  to  his  den  to  gather  some  leaves 
which  he  used  as  anodynes,  he  is  overtaken  by  a  paroxysm  of 
his  disease,  which  rends  him  with  such  anguish  that  he  sur- 
renders his  bow  and  arrows  to  Neoptolemus,  saying  that  of 
him  he  will  take  no  oath  for  their  safe  keeping,  and  sinks  into 
deep  sleep.  This  episode  seems  to  have  been  imitated  from 
the  Philoctetes  of  ^schylus.  The  chorus  at  once  suggest  that 
they  should  decamp  with  the  weapons.  To  this  Neoptolemus 
will  hardly  deign  a  reply,  and  presently  Philoctetes  revives  re- 
freshed, and  again  master  of  himself.  Then  Neoptolemus  breaks 
to  him  the  news  that  he  must  go  to  Troy,  and  refuses  to  give  him 
back  his  bow.  But  he  is  so  shaken  by  the  powerful  appeal  of 
Philoctetes  that  he  is  about  to  yield,  when  he  is  stopped  by  the 
opportune  advent  of  Odysseus,  who  immediately  assumes  a  tone 
of  command,  insists  on  carrying  off  Philoctetes  by  force,  or  if 
not,  threatens  to  carry  his  arms  to  Troy,  and  wield  them  himself, 
or  place  them  in  the  hands  of  Teucer.  The  prayers,  the  lamen- 
tations, the  execrations  of  Philoctetes  are  passionate  beyond 
the  utterance  of  any  other  Greek  hero ;  but  he  is  not  for  one 
moment  to  be  shaken  in  his  resolve,  that  neither  by  force 
nor  persuasion  will  he  return  to  Troy.  At  last  the  others 
leave  him,  the  chorus  being  ordered  to  wait  for  a  few  mo- 
ments, as  the  lonely  man  supplicates  to  have  human  company, 
and  despairs  at  another  return  to  solitude.  Then  follows  the 
great  scene  where  Neoptolemus  comes  back,  followed  anxiously 
by  Odysseus,  who  exhausts  arguments  and  threats  to  dissuade 
him  from  his  resolve.  He  has  been  conquered  by  Philoctetes' 
iron  constancy,  and  determines  to  give  him  back  his  arms.  He 
then  beseeches  him,  on  the  ground  of  gratitude,  to  change  his 
purpose,  and  come  to  Troy ;  but  Philoctetes,  though  far  more 
sorely  tried  by  kindness  than  by  fraud  or  force,  is  still  absolutely 
firm.  Thus  he  finally  conquers  Neoptolemus,  all  the  policy  of 
Odysseus  is  set  at  naught,  and  the  miserable  suppliant  in  rags 
and  tears,  whose  lamentations  have  occupied  the  stage  for 


312  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvi. 

many  scenes,  is  actually  leaving  the  island  victorious,  and  on 
the  way  to  his  home,  when  this  conclusion,  which  would  violate 
all  mythic  history,  is  reversed  by  the  divine  interposition  of 
Heracles,  who  directs  him  to  return  to  Troy,  and  aid  in  the 
destruction  of  the  city. 

A  more  manifest  cfiaracter  play  cannot  be  conceived.  The 
hero  is  in  rags  and  in  misery,  his  lamentations  have  offended 
ancient  philosophers,  as  teaching  unmanliness,  and  occupied 
modern  critics,  as  requiring  justification  on  aesthetic  grounds. 
But  the  constancy  and  inflexible  sternness  of  an  unimpression- 
able, blunt  nature  is  no  interesting  psychological  fact,  nor  do 
we  come  to  admire  Philoctetes'  heroism,  till  we  are  made  fully 
to  feel  the  horror  of  his  condition,  and  the  despair  which 
filled  his  mind.  The  character  of  Neoptolemus  has  been 
greatly  and  perhaps  unduly  praised.  His  spasmodic  chivalry  is 
after  all  that  of  a  youthful  enthusiast,  who  spoils  a  great  policy, 
and  endangers  the  life  of  a  far  greater  hero.  For  it  seems  to 
me  that  Odysseus  is  clearly  intended  to  be  the  great  man  in 
the  play.  An  Athenian  audience  did  not  censure  his  duplicity 
as  we  do,  but  thought  it  more  than  justified  by  the  important 
ends  he  had  in  view.  No  doubt  many  of  them  regarded  Neo- 
ptolemus as  an  obstinate  young  fool,  whose  misplaced  gene- 
rosity would  have  foiled  a  great  national  cause,  had  the  gods 
not  miraculously  interfered.  I  will  only  repeat  that  this  play 
contains  most  of  the  features  objected  to  by  the  critics  in 
Euripides,  who  even  speak  as  if  the  latter  had  invented  the 
knave-Odysseus,  a  conception  probably  dating  from  the 
comedies  of  Epicharmus,  and  perhaps  as  old  as  the  Cyclic 
poems. 

The  story  of  Philoctetes  is  alluded  to  by  Homer  in  the 
Catalogue  of  the  Iliad  and  by  Pindar  in  his  first  Pythian  ode,  but 
was  taken,  like  many  other  tragedies,  from  the  Little  Iliad  by 
Sophocles,  who  seems  however  to  have  added  the  all-impor- 
tant part  of  Neoptolemus.  The  subject  had  already  been 
handled  both  by  ^Eschylus  and  by  Euripides,  the  Philoctetes 
even  of  the  latter  preceding  that  of  Sophocles  by  more  than 
twenty  years,  for  it  is  ridiculed  in  the  Achamians  of  Aristo- 
phanes. But  both  these  poets  had  represented  the  island  of 


CH.  xvi.     THE  FRAGMENTS    OF  SOPHOCLES.  313 

Lemnos  as  inhabited,  and  the  chorus  was  composed  of  the 
natives,  whereas  Sophocles,  far  more  poetically,  though  unhis- 
torically,  makes  it  a  savage  desert.  Both,  again,  seem  to  have 
represented  the  hero  vanquished  by  having  his  arms  purloined, 
whereas  Sophocles  makes  him  superior  even  to  this  fierce  com- 
pulsion. In  yEschylus  Odysseus  was  so  aged  as  not  to  be 
recognised  by  Philoctetes ;  in  Euripides,  Athene  had  disguised 
him.  These  and  other  details  are  given  by  Dion  Chrysostom, 
who  not  only  compares  the  three  works,  but  gives  an  ab- 
stract of  the  opening  scenes  of  Euripides'  play.1  It  appears 
manifest  that  in  this  case,  at  all  events,  Sophocles  had  far  sur- 
passed both  his  rivals.  There  were  also  versions  by  Philocles, 
Antiphon,  and  Theodectes,  and  a  play  of  Attius,  founded 
apparently  on  that  of  ^Eschylus,  and  of  which  a  good  many 
fragments  remain.  Cicero  cites  it,  and  Ovid  touches  the  story 
in  his  Metamorphoses.  Quintus  Calaber  not  only  gives  us  a  full 
account  of  Philoctetes  at  Lemnos,  probably  according  to  the 
version  of  Euripides,  but  brings  him  to  Troy,  and  thus  to  the 
period  handled  in  another  play  of  Sophocles.  In  modern  days, 
Fenelon  has  an  elegant  prose  paraphrase  in  his  Telemaque,  re- 
markable for  its  simplicity  and  faithfulness,  when  we  consider 
the  ridiculous  travesty  of  Chateaubriand  (1754),  who  attempts 
endless  improvements  on  Sophocles.2  He  gives  Philoctetes  a 
daughter  Sophia,  with  a  governess,  in  order  that  Neoptolemus 
may  fall  in  love  with  Sophia  !  The  version  of  La  Harpe  (1783) 
is  less  ridiculous,  but  not  more  faithful.  The  Greek  play  itself 
has  been  more  than  once  performed  in  French  seminaries, 
owing  to  the  interest  excited  by  Fenelon's  paraphrase. 

§  193.  We  need  not  delay  in  this  history  over  the  frag- 
ments, which  are  only  of  interest  to  the  very  special  student  of 
Sophocles.3  In  no  case  can  we  reconstruct  the  plan  of  any  lost 
drama  from  them,  even  with  the  help  of  the  fragments  of 
Attius  and  Pacuvius,  who  imitated  him,  though  loosely.  The 
myths  he  used,  and  the  possible  conjectures  as  to  their  treat- 
ment, have  been  classified  and  expanded,  with  endless  learn- 

1  These  interesting  passages  from  Dion's  orations  are  cited  in  full  in 
Dindorf's  edition  of  the  fragments  of  Euripides'  play. 

2  See  Patin,  p.  146.  3  Cf.  Prof.  Campbell's  Sophocles,  ch.  xv. 
VOL.  I.  — 14 


3H  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvr. 

ing,  by  Welcker,1  in  whose  great  work  the  curious  student  may 
see  how  small  is  the  result  of  all  his  combinations.  As  I  re- 
marked above  (p.  283),  a  great  many  of  the  fragments  are  mere 
citations  of  y\uaaai,  or  curious  words,  which  the  poet  used, 
and  which  form  a  strange  and  exceptional  vocabulary.  A  few 
passages  have  been  preserved,  for  their  beauty  and  philosophic 
depth,  by  Stobseus ;  others  are  cited  by  the  scholiast  on  Euri- 
pides as  parallel  passages.  The  finest  is  probably  the  following : 

Tn  7ra?5ey,  7}  rot  Kvirpis  ov  Kuirpis  /J.6vov, 
oAA.'  effrl  iro\\ui>  dvof^drcav  eirdbi/vtJ.os. 
fvriv  /j.ev"AiSr]s,  fffn  8'  afyOtros  )3»a, 
(ffTiv  Se  \vcrffa.  /j.aivds,  fffri  8'  '1/j.epos 
&Kparos,  «<TT'  olfueypds.   ev  Ktlvri  rb  irav, 
ffTTouSatov,  rjffvxaiOf,  ts  ft'iav  &yov. 
fVTrjKtTai  yap  itvev^vcav,  offois  Zvi 
tyv)(T]-     T»S  oi/xl  rrjffSe  rrjs  6eov  /Bopd ; 
tlfffpxfra.1  fjifv  IxQvtav  irXtarip  ytvfi, 
eve<TTt  8'  ev  xepcrou  TCTpa<TKf\ei  yov fj- 
vce/j.&  8'  (i>  oitavdlffi  rovKeivrjs  irrtptiv, 
tv  Bripfflv,  £v  /3pOTO?(riv,  ev  Beats  &v<a. 
Tip'  ov  ira\aiov(r'  fs  Tpls  eicl3d\\ti  Bfwv  ; 
el  fj.oi  6e/j.is,  8efj.is  Se  ra\-r)6ri  \tyetv, 
Atbs  -rvpavvei  iri>ev/j.6va>v  •  &vev  Sop6s, 
&vev  ffiSrjpov  irdfra  rot  ffvvrefj.veTai 
Kvirpis  ra  Qvt\T(av  Kal  Gecav  fiov\ev/j.aTa. 

But  there  are  fine  thoughts  and  rich  poetic  expressions  to  be 
found  scattered  everywhere  through  them. 

§  194.  The  technical  improvements  made  by  Sophocles  in  his 
tragedies  were  not  many  or  important.  He  reduced  the  chorus, 
it  is  said,  from  fifteen  to  twelve.  He  added  a  third  actor,  and 
in  the  (Edipus  at  Colonus  a  fourth  may  possibly  have  been  em- 
ployed. Above  all,  he  abandoned  the  practice  of  connecting 
his  dramas  in  tetralogies,  and  introduced  the  competing  in 
single  tragedies  with  his  rivals.  As  they,  however,  continued  to 
write  in  tetralogies,  it  is  a  riddle  which  none  of  our  authorities 

1  We  are  accordingly  not  surprised  to  hear  (Schol.  in  Elect.  87,  on 
yys  la-6/j.oip'  a^p)  that  he  was  parodied  by  the  comic  poet  Pherecrates. 
This  is,  perhaps,  the  only  hint  we  have  of  any  criticism  upon  the  Attic 
darling  in  his  own  day. 


CH.  xvi.        HIS  RELATION  TO  AESCHYLUS.  315 

have  thought  fit  to  solve  for  us,  how  a  fair  competition  could 
be  arranged  on  such  terms.1  He  is  also  said  to  have  added 
scenography,  or  artistic  decoration  of  the  stage,  with  some 
attempt  at  landscape  painting — an  improvement  sure  to  come 
with  the  lapse  of  time,  and  marked  accidentally  as  to  date 
by  Sophocles.  But  these  outward  changes,  in  themselves 
slight,  are  the  mark  of  far  deeper  innovations  in  the  tone  and 
temper  of  Greek  tragedy.  Sophocles  is  not  the  last  of  an 
old  school ;  he  is  not  the  pupil  of  ^schylus  :  he  is  the  head 
of  a  new  school ;  he  is  the  master  of  Euripides.  We  still 
possess  his  own  judgments  as  regards  both  these  poets,  and  his 
relation  to  them.  Plutarch  reports  him  to  have  said2  :  'that 
having  passed  without  serious  effort  through  the  grandiloquence 
of  JEschylus,  and  then  through  the  harshness  and  artificiality  of 
his  own  (earlier)  style,  he  had  at  last  adopted  his  third  kind  of 
style,  which  was  most  suited  to  painting  character,  and  (therefore) 
the  best.'  Whatever  reading  we  adopt,  the  sense  as  regards 
^sschylus  seems  certainly  to  be  that  in  early  years,  and  before 
he  had  seriously  settled  down  to  write,  he  had  got  rid  of  any 
dominant  influence  from  ^Eschylus.  We  have  indeed  no 
traces  of  ^Eschylean  style  or  of  ./Eschylean  thinking  in  any  of 
the  plays  or  fragments  ;  but  there  is  ground  for  separating  the 
second  CEdipus  and  the  Philoctetes  from  the  rest,  and  regard- 
ing them  as  the  representatives  of  the  milder  and  smoother 
tone  of  his  ripest  years.  But  who  can  deny  that  this 

1  We  should  be  disposed  to  question  the  truth  of  the  statement,  which 
rests  upon  Suidas  alone,  and  refer  it  merely  to  the  disconnecting  of  plays 
in  subject,  which  were  yet  performed  successively,  were  not  all  the  didas- 
caliae  silent  concerning  any  trilogy  or  tetralogy  of  Sophocles,  while  they 
frequently  mention  them  in  Euripides,  and  speak  of  the  practice  as  still 
subsisting.     The  satyric  dramas  of  Sophocles,  which  can  hardly  have  been 
acted  by  themselves,  seem,  however,  to  prove  that  Sophocles  brought  out 
several  plays  together,  though  he  is  always  reported  to  have  conquered 
with  one.     We  have  not  sufficient  evidence  to  solve  this  puzzle. 

2  Here  is  the  text  of  this  much  disputed  passage  :  &ffirtp  yap  6  2.  eteyf, 
•r'bv   A>lff)(6\OV   SiaTreTrai^ebs  oyxov,  elra  r5  iritcphv  /col    KaTaTt^vov  rrjs  avrov 
KO.Taa'Kfvris,  rp'nov   fjSr]  rb  TTJS  \t£tcas  /LifTa/3d.\\eiv  [^SToAa/SeTv]  eZSos,  oirep 
f(FT\v  riBiKiirarov  Kal  fitXriffTov.    The  word  Siowreiraixws  troubles  the  critics, 
who  suggest  SiOTreTrActKa'S,  Siatr6ir\i^(i>s,  and  Staire 


316  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvi. 

change  of  style  was  most  probably  caused  by  the  rivalry  of 
Euripides  ?  For  there  is  in  the  earlier  plays  a  great  deal  of 
that  affected  ingenuity  of  diction,  which  Thucydides  describes 
(in  the  mouth  of  Cleon)  as  the  fashion  of  those  days  at  Athens. 
Prose  writing  had  sprung  up,  political  speeches  were  becoming 
frequent,  and  the  historian  paints  with  curious  felicity  the  re- 
spective efforts  of  the  speakers  and  the  audience  in  that  too 
highly  tempered  generation — the  one  to  astonish  by  some  new 
and  unexpected  point ;  the  other  to  outrun  the  speaker,  and 
anticipate  the  surprise.  Thus  Sophocles,  like  the  speakers  in 
Thucydides,  plays  at  hide-and-seek  with  his  hearers,  and  often 
when  his  expression  seems  at  first  sight  easy,  a  further  reflection 
discloses  unobserved  difficulties  and  new  depths  of  meaning. 
In  this  I  would  compare  him  to  his  greatest  Roman  imitator, 
Vergil,  who,  under  an  apparent  smoothness  of  style,  hides  great 
difficulties,  and  often  new  and  unsuspected  meanings.1  But 
the  easy  and  transparent  writing  of  Euripides  must  have  im- 
pressed his  generous  rival,  and  hence  we  may  reckon  this  to  be 
one  of  the  points  in  which  Sophocles  improved  by  contact  with 
his  great  successor  in  art.  Nor  was  the  influence  limited  to 
mere  style.  The  scholiast  at  the  close  of  the  Orestes,  in  com- 
menting on  the  melodramatic 2  endings  of  the  Alcestis  and 
Orestes,  notes  that  the  Tyro  of  Sophocles  ended  with  a  happy 
recognition  scene. 

§  195.  The  contrast  between  the  poets  is  said  (in  Aristotle's 
Poetic)  to  have  been  expressed  by  Sophocles  in  the  famous  words, 
'  that  he  had  painted  men  as  they  ought  to  be,  Euripides  as  they 
were.'  After  many  years'  study  of  both  poets,  and  after  a  careful 
reading  of  all  the  expositions  of  this  passage,  and  proofs  of  itr 
offered  by  the  critics,  I  am  obliged  to  state  my  deliberate 
opinion  that,  if  Sophocles  intended  to  say  this,  it  is  not  true. 
There  is  no  kind  of  heroism  in  Sophocles  to  which  we 

1  This  is  the  description  of  Vergil's  style  which  I  have  often  heard  from 
the  lips  of  the  late  Dr.  James  Henry,  who  knew  more  than  all  the  rest  of 
the  world  put  together  about  Vergil.  He  used  to  say  that  the  obvious 
meaning  was  veiy  frequently  the  wrong  meaning  in  Vergil,  and  could  be 
proved  so. 

'*  lie  calls  them  comic,  by  which  he  of  course  means  like  the  new 
comedy. 


CH.  xvi.        HfS  RELATION  TO  EURIPIDES.  317 

cannot  find  adequate  parallels  in  Euripides ;  there  are  no 
human  weaknesses  or  meannesses  in  Euripides  which  we 
cannot  fairly  parallel  in  the  scanty  remains  of  Sophocles,  and 
which  would  not,  in  my  firm  conviction,  be  amply  paralleled 
had  we  larger  means  of  comparison.  The  chorus,  which  in 
yEschylus  was  a  stirring  actor  in  the  progress  of  the  play, 
was  not  by  Euripides,  but  by  Sophocles  first  degraded  to  be 
a  mere  spectator  of  the  action — sometimes  an  accomplice, 
sometimes  a  mere  selfish,  sometimes  an  irrelevant,  observer. 
Rags  and  lamentations  are  not  monopolised  by  Euripides, 
neither  are  dishonesty  and  meanness  the  apanage  of  his  stage. 
The  wrangling  of  heroes  and  heroines  is  as  common  in  the 
model  poet  as  in  his  debased  successor.  Thus  we  can  hardly 
defend  the  statement  even  if  we  interpret  it,  as  Welcker  does, 
to  mean  this  :  that  Sophocles  represented  men  as  a  tragic  poet 
ought  to  represent  them,  Euripides  as  they  were.  It  is  a  far 
more  probable  and  modest  translation,  yet  even  here  we 
are  not  borne  out  by  the  facts.  But  there  is  in  any  case 
one  point  of  real  importance  in  the  remark.  It  implies  the 
essential  truth  that  Sophocles,  like  Euripides,  made  the  charac- 
ters and  passions  of  men  his  object,  and  did  not  dwell  upon  the 
Divine  or  supernatural  element  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
world.  As  Socrates  brought  down  philosophy,  so  Sophocles 
brought  down  tragic  poetry  from  heaven  to  dwell  upon  earth. 
The  gods  are  thrown  into  the  background,  and  are  there 
merely  to  account  for  moral  difficulties,  and  justify  cruelties 
which  human  reason  cannot  but  resent  In  his  latest  play  (the 
Philoctetes),  the  Deus  ex  machina  actually  comes  in  to  reverse 
the  result,  and  undo  all  that  has  been  so  laboriously  worked 
out  by  human  passion  and  human  resolve.  There  is  here 
already  a  great  gulf  separating  us  from  YEschylus — a  difference 
in  kind  ;  we  can  pass  over  to  Euripides  easily,  and  by  an  ill- 
defined  boundary. 

§  196.  Nevertheless,  ancient  and  modern  critics  have  agreed 
to  place  Sophocles  first  among  the  Attic  tragedians.  Though 
an  inferior  poet  to  ^schylus,  and  an  inferior  philosopher  to 
either,  Sophocles  must  be  regarded  a  more  perfect  artist  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  he  was  so  perpetually  imitated  by  the 


3i 8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xvi. 

Romans  and  the  French,  while  among  our  deeper  poets  both 
^Eschylus  and  Euripides  have  maintained  a  greater  influence. 
For  as  an  artist,  as  a  perfect  exponent  of  that  intensely  Attic 
development  which  in  architecture  tempered  Doric  strength 
with  Ionic  sweetness,  which  in  sculpture  passed  from  archaic 
stiffness  to  majestic  action,  which  in  all  the  arts  found  the 
mean  between  antique  repose  and  modern  vividness,  as  the 
poet  of  Athens,  in  the  heyday  of  Athens,  Sophocles  stands 
without  an  equal.  His  plots  are  more  ethical  than  those  of 
Euripides,  his  scepticism  is  more  reverent  or  reticent,  his 
religion  more  heartfelt.  He  does  not  disturb  his  hearers  with 
suggestions  of  modern  doubts  and  difficulties.  He  is  essentially 
ti/coXoe,  as  Aristophanes  calls  him,  without  angles  or  contra- 
dictions. And  thus  he  is  wisely  set  aside  by  the  comic  critic 
in  the  great  controversy  between  the  old  and  the  new,  for  he 
belonged  to  the  new,  and  yet  had  not  broken  with  the  old.  I 
will  only  add  that  his  greatness  has  been  enhanced  by  the  pre- 
servation of  only  a  few,  and  those  his  greatest,  works.  Had  we 
eight  or  ten  additional  plays,  of  the  quality  of  the  Trachinitz — 
for  the  poet  was  known  to  be  unequal  in  power — the  compari- 
sons with  Euripides,  who  has  survived  in  his  weakness  as  well 
as  his  strength,  might  possibly  have  been  more  just  and  a  little 
less  foolish. 

§  197.  Bibliographical,  The  recension  of  the  text  of  our  extant 
plays  depends  altogether  on  the  Medicean  codex,  already  men- 
tioned in  connection  with  ^Eschylus.  From  it  was  derived  the 
Editio  princeps  of  Aldus  (Venice,  1502),  a  beautiful  little  book, 
and  not  uncommon  in  good  libraries.  Three  of  the  plays,  the 
Ajax,  Electra,  and  (Edipus  Tyrannus,  were  much  more  studied 
than  the  rest,  and  exist  in  many  MSS.,  which  are,  however,  not 
so  pure,  and  have  been  corrupted  in  the  Byzantine  age.  From 
this  inferior  text  came  all  the  editions  from  Turnebus  (1533)  to 
Brunck  (1786),  who  first  recognised  the  superior  value  of  the 
Medicean  text,  which  has  been  followed  by  all  subsequent  editors. 
In  the  present  century  the  three  editions  of  G.  Hermann  (1817- 
48),  those  of  Wunder,  of  G.  Dindorf,  of  Schneidewin  and  Nauck, 
of  Bergk,  are  best  known.  We  have  besides  English  editions  by 
Dale,  Blaydes,  Campbell,  and  of  some  of  the  plays  (by  Professor 


c-n.xvr.       EDITIONS  AND    TRANSLATIONS.  319 

Jebb)  in  the  Catena  Classicorum  published  at  Cambridge.  On 
the  whole,  the  text  is  not  so  corrupt  as  that  of  the  other  dra- 
matists, although,  apart  from  the  Byzantine  corruptions,  the 
German  critics  have  noted  many  lines  which  they  suppose  due 
to  early  stage  traditions,  nay  even  some  of  them  to  the  family 
of  Sophocles.  It  is  obvious  that  when  we  throw  back  interpola- 
tions to  such  an  age,  their  discovery  depends  altogether  on  sub- 
jective taste,  and  need  not  detain  us  here.  The  reader  will  find 
these  suspected  lines  printed  at  the  foot  of  Dindorf  's  text  in  his 
Poct/z  scenici  and  elsewhere. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  sound  ancient  learning  preserved  to 
us  in  the  prefaces  and  scholia,  first  published  by  Lascaris  at 
Rome  (1518)  without  the  text,  then  by  Junta  at  Florence  in 
1544,  and  then  several  times  before  the  edition  of  Stephanus  in 
1568.  The  best  of  the  notes  came  from  what  are  called  the 
viro^t'rjpartffTai,  who  certainly  as  early  as  the  Alexandrian 
period  wrote  on  the  text,  and  collected  the  Didascalitz  as  to  the 
performances.  Aristophanes  is  known  to  have  paid  attention 
to  Sophocles.  Aristarchus  is  also  named,  but  Didymus  seems 
the  chief  source  of  the  extant  scholia.  Those  on  the  (Edipus  at 
Colomis  are  particularly  'good.  There  is  a  good  edition  of 
the  scholia  by  Elmsley  and  Gaisford  in  1826,  and  several 
special  lexicons  of  Sophocles'  language,  of  which  the  best  are 
those  of  F.  Ellendt,  and  of  G.  Dindorf :  the  latter  was  prose- 
cuted by  Ellendt's  representatives,  and  the  edition  suppressed, 
so  that  copies  of  this  most  valuable  book  are  now  scarce.  Of 
complete  translations  the  most  celebrated  among  the  many 
German  is  that  of  Donner ;  other  scholars,  like  Scholl  and 
Bockh,  have  done  single  plays.  The  French,  besides  the 
imitations  above  cited  under  the  separate  plays,  have  the  Theatre 
of  Brusmoy,  and  Villemain  mentions  with  praise  a  literal  ver- 
sion of  Sophocles  by  Malezieux.  In  English  we  have  Potter 
^1788),  and  in  our  own  day  Dale,  whose  book  I  have  in  vain 
endeavoured  to  find ;  also  Mr.  Plumptre's  version — a  meri- 
torious work,  and  several  plays  ably  done  by  Prof.  L.Campbell. 
Special  studies  on  Sophocles,  both  generally  and  on  particular 
plays,  are  endless  in  Germany.  Welcker's  is  of  course  the 
most  exhaustive  ;  Klein's,  inaccurate  and  capricious,  but  very 


320  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvi. 

suggestive;  Bernhardy's,  simply  laudatory  and  full  of  empty 
wordiness  in  criticism,  together  with  deep  and  accurate  learn- 
ing as  to  facts.  Our  great  living  poets,  who  are  accomplished 
Grecians,  have,  so  far  as  I  know,  said  nothing  of  consequence 
on  Sophocles.1 

1  Professor  Campbell's  monograph  now  supplies  the  English  reader 
with  a  detailed  and  most  enthusiastic  estimate  of  the  poet's  genius  and  of 
his  extant  plays.  It  will  be  observed  that  none  of  the  points  in  which  I 
have  suggested  imperfections  are  adopted  by  Mr.  Campbell,  and  that  the 
poet  is  everywhere  vindicated  from  any  attempt  (I  will  not  say  at  adverse, 
but  even)  at  independent  criticism.  Though  I  deeply  respect  this  simple- 
hearted  enthusiasm,  it  does  not  appear  to  me  the  best  way  of  stimulating 
the  study  of  any  writer;  and  hence  I  do  not  regret  that  the  views  set  forth 
in  the  previous  chapter  were  written  and  printed  before  I  had  the  advan- 
tage of  being  influenced  by  the  elaborate  panegyric  of  so  competent  a 
scholar.  I  will  not  attempt  to  criticise  his  work,  which  differs  from  mine 
mainly  in  this  contrast  of  spirit,  and  no  doubt  in  the  greater  elegance  of 
its  language,  but  will  only  add  that  there  are  many  facts  in  the  history  of 
the  poet  and  his  works  which  may  be  learned  from  the  present  chapter  even 
after  the  perusal  of  his  more  elaborate  work. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
EURIPIDES. 

§  198.  EURIPIDES  was  born  in  the  year  of  the  battle  of  Salamis 
(480  B.C.) — nay,  according  to  the  legends,  on  the  very  day  of 
the  battle  (aoth  of  Boedromionj — and  apparently  on  the  island, 
whither  his  parents  had  fled,  with  other  Athenians,  for  refuge. 
He  is  said  to  have  afterwards  had  a  fancy  for  this  island,  and  to 
have  composed  his  tragedies  there  in  a  retired  spot,  within  view 
of  the  sea,  from  which  he  borrows  so  many  striking  metaphors. 
His  father,  Mnesarchus  or  Mnesarchides,  is  said  to  have  for- 
merly lived  in  Boeotia,  but  most  probably  as  a  foreigner,  and 
afterwards  in  the  Attic  deme  of  Phlyi'a,  according  to  Suidas. 
Some  of  the  Lives  say  he  was  a  petty  trader,  but  this  is  incon- 
sistent with  his  son's  apparent  wealth  and  literary  leisure,  and 
would  hardly  have  been  passed  over  in  silence  by  Aristo- 
phanes. The  mother's  name  was  Kleito,  and  she  was  perpe- 
tually ridiculed  by  the  comic  poets  as  an  herb-seller.  The 
story  is  most  probably  false,  and  rests  upon  some  acci- 
dental coincidence  of  name,  or  some  anecdote  which  gave 
contemporaries  a  sufficient  handle  for  their  joke,  though  it 
is  lost  to  us.  The  youthful  poet  is  said  to  have  been  trained 
with  some  success  for  athletic  contests  by  his  father,  and 
perhaps  to  this  we  may  ascribe  the  strong  contempt  and 
aversion  with  which  he  speaks  of  that  profession.  There 
were,  moreover,  pictures  shown  at  Megara,  which  were  ascribed 
to  him,  so  that  he  evidently  had  the  reputation  of  a  man  of 
varied  culture.  But  he  abandoned  his  earlier  pursuits,  whatever 
they  may  have  been,  for  the  study  of  philosophy  under  Anaxa- 
goras,  probably  also  Protagoras,  and  possibly  Prodicus,  and  in 
mature  life  seems  to  have  stood  in  close  contact  to  Socrates. 
He  was  essentially  a  student,  and  such  a  collector  of  books 
that  his  library  was  famous,  but  he  took  no  part  in  public 
14* 


322  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVIT. 

affairs.1  But  he  began  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  to  compete  in 
tragedy  (with  his  Peliades),  and  continued  all  his  life  a  prolific 
and  popular,  though  not  a  successful  .poet.  He  was  known  to 
have  won  the  first  prize  only  five  times,2  though  he  may  have 
written  ninety  tragedies,  and,  even  if  we  hold  him  always  to  have 
contended  with  tetralogies  (or  trilogies  followed  by  a  satyric  or 
melodrama),  must  have  contended  over  twenty  times.  He  was" 
twice  married,  and  unfortunately:  first  to  Choerile,  who  was 
mother  of  his  three  sons,  Mnesarchides,  a  merchant;  Mnesilo- 
chus,  an  actor  ;  and  the  younger  Euripides,  who  wrote  dramas, 
and  brought  out  some  of  his  father's  posthumous  works,  such  as 
the  Iphigenia  in  Aulis,  and  Bacchce.  The  comic  poets  do  not 
scruple  to  reflect  upon  the  unfaithfulness  of  his  wives,  and 
deduce  from  it  his  alleged  hatred  of  women.  Late  in  life  he 
removed  to  the  court  of  Archelaus  of  Macedon,  where  he  was 
received  with  great  honour,  and  wrote  some  plays  (especiairy 
the  Archelaus  and  Bacchce)  on  the  local  legends.  He  appears  to 
have  died  there  at  the  age  of  seventy-four,  having  been  attacked 
and  torn  by  sporting-dogs,  which  were  set  upon  him  maliciously. 
He  was  honoured  with  a  pompous  tomb  in  Macedonia,  and  a 
cenotaph  at  Athens,  on  which  the  historian  Thucydides  is  said 
to  have  inscribed  an  epitaph.3 

1  His  moral  portrait  cannot  be  better  expressed  than  in  the  words  in 
which  he  may  possibly  have  meant  to  describe  his  own  aspirations  :  — 

SAjSiOS  OffTIS  T7JS  ' 


ufaf  teoKnStv  tir\ 
liffr'  els  aS'iKOvs  vpd^tis  6pfj.aiv, 
oAA'  aOavdrov  KaBopuv  fyvfffws 
K6<r/J.ov  ayJiptav,  WT)  r 

Kal  S-TTTJ  KO!  8ir<as. 
,  TOIS  8e  roiovrois  oiSeVor' 

(pyouv  fj.t\fTrj/j.a  vpoai^ti  (fr.  902)  . 

2  Cf.  the  learned  and  interesting  note  in  Meineke's  Comic  Fragments, 
ii.  p.  904,  on  the  small  number  of  victories  gained  by  the  greatest  poets, 
and  the  frequent  preferment  of  obscure  names.   It  was  not  unfrequent,  as  he 
notes  in  the  text,  for  great   poets  to  be  even  refused  a   chorus  by  the 
aichon,  a  slight  of  which  both  Sophocles  and  Cratinus  had  to  complain. 

3  ft,vfi/J.a  fitv  'EAAas  oTraa'  EupiiriSov,  offrfa  5'  f<rxft 
•yj)  Ma/ce8&ii/  •  TT?  yap  S«|aTO  re'p/ua  /3/ou. 

8'  'EAA<£5os  'EAAas,  'AQijvat.  ir\fiff-ra.  8«  Movffas 
(K  -iriXXfav  Kzl  rbi>  tirauvov  «Xet- 


CH.  xvii.        HIS  PERSONAL   CHARACTER.  323 

The  aged  Sophocle§  is  said  to  have  shown  deep  sorrow  at  the 
death  of  his  rival,  in  this  contrasting  strongly  with  Aristophanes, 
who  chose  the  next  performance  for  his  bitterest  and  most 
unsparing  onslaught  upon  him  (in  the  Frogs}.  The  poet  is  de- 
scribed, upon  not  the  highest  authority,  to  have  been  of  gloomy 
and  morose  temper,  hating  conviviality  and  laughter.  There  is 
no  Greek  author  whose  portrait  is  so  distinctive  and  familiar 
in  museums  of  ancient  art.  The  sitting  statue  in  the  Louvre,  and 
two  busts  at  Naples,  probably  copied  from  the  statue  set  up  by 
Lycurgus  in  the  theatre  at  Athens,  are  the  most  striking.  The 
face  is  that  of  an  elderly  and  very  thoughtful  man,  with  noble 
features,  and  of  great  beauty,  but  not  without  an  expression  of 
patience  and  of  sorrow  such  as  beseems  him  who  has  been 
well  called  der  Prophet  des  Wcltschmerzes.  As  we  should  expect, 
the  face  is  not  essentially  Greek,  but  of  a  type  to  be  found 
among  thoughtful  men  of  our  own  day.  His  social  position 
and  comfortable  means  are  proved  not  only  by  his  possession  of 
a  valuable  library,  but  by  his  holding  one  or  two  priestly  offices, 
which  were  probably  rich  sinecures,  and  would  in  no  case  have 
been  intrusted  to  a  man  of  mean  origin  or  low  consideration. 

As  regards  the  possible  ninety-two  dramas  written  by  the 
poet,  the  ancients  seem  to  have  known  seventy-five,  of  which 
the  names,  now  partly  erased,  were  engraved  on  the  pedestal  of 
the  extant  sitting  statue.  We  possess  about  one  fifth  of  the 
number,  viz.  seventeen  tragedies  and  one  satyric  drama, 
excluding  the  Rhesus,  as  of  very  doubtful  authorship.  This 
large  legacy  of  time,  if  we  compare  the  scanty  remains  of 
^Eschylus  and  Sophocles,  does  not  seem  to  comprehend  any 
choice  selection  of  his  chefs  d'ozuvre,  but  a  mere  average  collec- 
tion, of  which  our  estimate  is  probably  lower  than  that  we 
should  have  formed,  had  fewer  plays,  and  the  best,  survived. 
The  dates  of  some  of  them  are  fixed  by  the  didascaliae,  and  of 
others  (partly  at  least)  by  the  allusions  in  Aristophanes'  plays. 
The  usual  d  priori  argument,  which  infers  from  laxity  of  metre  or 
style  either  crudity  or  decadence  of  genius,  fails  signally  in  the 
case  of  Euripides,  for  his  latest  plays  which  are  known  are  far 
stricter  in  form  than  others  preserved  from  his  middle  life,  such 
as  the  Helena. 


324  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvir. 

§  199.  Innumerable  attempts  have  been  made  to  gather  from 
his  writings  an  estimate  of  his  politics,  of  his  social  views,  and  of 
his  religion.  But  although  the  ancients  have  led  the  way  in 
this  course,  and  have  everywhere  assumed  that  the  philosophic 
utterances  of  the  poet's  characters  were  meant  to  convey  his 
own  sentiments,  such  an  inference  must  be  very  dangerous  in 
the  case  of  a  thoroughly  dramatic  poet,  and  especially  a  dra- 
matic poet  who  paints  upon  his  stage  the  violence  of  human 
passion.  There  is  indeed  an  anecdote  of  little  authority,  but  of 
great  aptness,  preserved,  in  which  we  are  told  that  the  audience 
cried  out  against  the  immorality  of  the  praise  of  wealth  above 
virtue,  but  that  the  poet  himself  came  forward  and  bid  them 
wait  to  see  the  punishment  of  the  character  who  uttered  it.1 
Thus,  again,  had  the  famous  line,  '  my  tongue  has  sworn,  but  my 
heart  is  free,'  which  Cicero  and  others  quote  with  reprobation 
from  the  Hippolyttis,  been  preserved  as  a  mere  fragment,  we 
could  not  have  known  that  this  very  speaker  actually  loses  his 
life  rather  than  break  his  oath.  It  is  therefore  an  inquiry  of 
great  interest,  but  of  greater  uncertainty,  to  reconstruct  this 
poet's  mind  from  the  words  of  his  characters,  and  with  this 
caution  I  refer  the  reader  to  the  special  tracts  of  Liibker, 
Haupt,  Goebel,  and  others,  as  well  as  to  the  fuller  work  of 
Hartung.  A  great  many  more  books  are  also  indicated  in 
the  exhaustive  discussion  of  Bernhardy.2  As  a  general  rule,  I 
should  be  disposed  to  lay  down  this  axiom,  that  the  poet's  own 
views  are  likely  to  be  found  either  (a)  in  the  soliloquies  of  his 
characters,  where  they  may  be  imagined  turning  to  the  audi- 
ence, or  (/3)  in  the  first  strophe  and  antistrophe  of  his  choruses, 
which  usually  express  general  sentiments,  before  passing  into  the 
special  subject  of  the  play  in  the  second  strophe.  I  have  else- 
where3 remarked  on  this  feature  in  Euripides.  But  of  course 
the  actors  may  have  had  some  conventional  sign  for  express- 
ing elsewhere  the  poet's  thoughts,  which  made  them  clear  to 
the  audience,  but  which  we  have  now  irreparably  lost. 

As  to  his  works  I  will  here  follow,  with  a  few  exceptions,  the 
order  critically  determined  by  W.  Dindorf,  noting  its  uncer- 

1  Cf.  Plutarch,  cited  on  the  passage  of  the  Ixion. 

2  Vol.  iii.  §  119.  3  Social  Greece,  p.  197. 


CH.  xvii.  THE  ALCESTIS.  325 

tainties  as  we  proceed.  The  vexed  question  not  merely  of 
the  poet's  merits,  but  of  his  own  views  of  his  mission,  and  the 
consequent  intention  of  his  writing,  will  be  discussed  when  our 
survey  has  been  completed. 

§  200.  The  Alcestis  is  the  earliest  play  which  has  survived, 
if  it  was  performed  as  the  last  play,  along  with  the  Kpiiaaat, 
'A\Kfjiaicjv  o  c)ia  ^wiptCoe,  and  Ti/A.£0oe,  in  Ol.  85,  2  (438  B.C.). 
But  as  the  same  prefatory  note  calls  it  his  sixteenth  work,  there 
may  be  something  wrong  in  the  figures,  for  he  probably  com- 
posed more  tragedies  before  that  date.  The  poet  obtained  the 
second  prize,  Sophocles  being  placed  first.  The  Telephus  seems 
to  have  struck  the  fancy  of  the  age,  for  its  ragged  hero,  who 
suffered  from  an  incurable  and  agonising  wound,  like  Sophocles' 
PhilocteteS)  is  often  ridiculed  by  Aristophanes.  But  to  us  the 
Alcestis  is  a  curious  and  almost  unique  example  of  a  great 
novelty  attempted  by  Euripides ' — a  novelty  which  Shaks- 
peare  has  sanctioned  by  his  genius — I  mean  the  mixture  of 
comic  and  vulgar  elements  with  real  tragic  pathos,  by  way 
of  contrast.  The  play  before  us  is  not  indeed  strictly  a 
tragedy,  but  a  melodrama,  with  a  happy  conclusion,  and  was 
noted  as  such  by  the  old  critics,  who  called  the  play  rather 
comic,  that  is  to  say,  like  the  new  comedies  in  this  respect. 
The  intention  of  the  poet  seems  to  have  been  to  calm  the 
minds  of  the  audience  agitated  by  great  sorrows,  and  to  tone 
them  by  an  afterpiece  of  a  higher  and  more  refined  character 
than  the  satyric  dramas,  which  were  coarse  and  generally  ob- 
scene. But  while  no  great  world-conflict  is  represented,  while  no 
mighty  moral  problem  is  held  in  solution,  there  are  a  series  of 
deep  and  practical  moral  lessons  conveyed  by  the  exquisite 
character-painting  of  the  play.  The  first  scene  is  between 
Apollo,  who  is  peculiarly  attached  to  the  house  of  Admetus, 
and  Death,  who  has  arrived  to  take  away  the  mistress  of  the 
liouse,  for  she  alone  has  consented  to  die  for  her  husband. 
There  is  something  comic  in  the  very  prologue,  which  describes 
how  Admetus,  '  having  tested  and  gone  through  all  his  friends, 

1  There  are  slight  touches  of  low  humour  in  the  watchman  and  the 
nurse  of  ^sschylus,  but  only  in  special  scenes,  which  afford  but  a  momen- 
tary relief  in  the  saddest  and  severest  of  tragedies 


326  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvir. 

his  aged  father  and  the  mother  who  bore  him,'  can  find  no  one 
else  to  volunteer  to  die  for  the  mere  purpose  of  saving  his  life. 
The  short  dialogue  between  Apollo  and  Death  is,  however,  very 
striking  and  justly  admired.  Then  enter  the  chorus  in  sus- 
pense, and  expecting  hourly  the  death  of  Alcestis,  but  they  are 
more  minutely  informed  in  the  matchless  narrative  of  a  waiting 
maid,  who  describes  how  Alcestis  bade  farewell  to  all  her  happi- 
ness, her  home,  her  children,  her  servants,  and  calmly,  though 
not  without  poignant  regrets,  faced  death  from  pure  self-denial 
for  the  sake  of  her  husband.  She  is  presently  led  in  by  him, 
and  in  a  most  affecting  dialogue  gives  him  her  parting  direc- 
tions, prays  him  not  to  replace  her  in  his  affections  by  a  second 
wife,  and  apparently  dies  upon  the  stage — a  most  exceptional 
thing  in  Greek  drama — amid  the  tearful  outcries  of  her  infant 
son  and  her  husband.  There  is  no  female  character  in  either 
/Eschylus  or  Sophocles  which  is  so  great  and  noble,  and  at 
the  same  time  so  purely  tender  and  womanly. 

The  effect  is  heightened  by  the  contrast  of  Admettts,  whose 
selfishness  would  be  quite  grotesque  were  it  not  Greek.  After 
going  the  round  of  all  his  friends  in  search  of  a  substitute,  he 
deeply  resents  the  gross  selfishness  of  his  parents,  whose 
advanced  age  made  it  ridiculous,  in  his  opinion,  that  they  should 
not  sacrifice  themselves  for  his  comfort  He  complains  bitterly 
of  his  dreadful  lot  in  losing  so  excellent  a  wife,  but  here  again 
evidently  on  selfish  grounds,  and  vows  eternal  hatred  to  and 
separation  from  his  father,  who  comes  with  gifts  for  the  dead, 
and  defends  himself  against  his  son's  attack  by  protesting  his 
own  equal  love  of  life,  and  that  it  was  no  Greek  fashion  to 
sacrifice  the  parent  for  his  child.  This  is  the  only  feature  of  the 
play  which  modern  critics  have  been  able  to  reprehend,  and 
they  have  done  so  with  some  unanimity,  whether  they  regard  the 
play  as  one  of  the  worst  of  Euripides,  like  Scholl,  or  as  one  of  the 
best,  like  Klein  and  Patin.  It  seems  to  me  that  they  have  totally 
missed  Euripides'  point,  and  the  most  profound  in  the  play,  by 
this  criticism.  The  poet  does  not  conceive  the  sacrifice  of 
Alcestis,  as  the  speaker  in  Plato's  Symposium  (179  B)  does,  to 
be  a  sacrifice  of  one  lover  for  another — an  aspect  sure  to  pre- 
dominate in  all  the  modern  versions.  It  is  not  for  the  love  of 


CH.  xvii.  CHARACTER   OF  ADMETUS.  327 

Admetus  that  she  dies.  She  represents  that  peculiar  female 
heroism,  which  makes  affection  the  highest  duty,  but  obeys  the 
demands  of  affection  in  the  form  of  family  ties,  as  the  dictates 
of  the  highest  moral  law.  We  see  these,  the  heroines  of  common 
life,  around  us  in  all  classes  of  society.  But  I  venture  to  assert 
that  in  no  case  does  this  heroic  devotion  of  self-sacrifice  come 
out  into  such  really  splendid  relief,  as  when  it  is  made  for  selfish 
and  worthless  people.  It  is  therefore  a  profound  psychological 
point  to  represent  Admetus  a  weak  and  selfish  man,  blessed,  as 
worthless  men  often  are,  by  special  favours  of  fortune  in  wealth 
and  domestic  happiness,  and  very  ready  to  perform  the  ordinary 
duties  of  good  fellowship,  such  as  hospitality,  but  wholly  un- 
equal to  any  real  sacrifice.  It  is  for  such  an  one  that  Alcestis 
dies — in  fact,  she  dies  not  for  Admetus,  butyfrr  her  husband  and 
children's  sake,  and  would  have  done  so  had  she  been  given  in 
marriage  to  any  other  like  person.  This  is  the  true  meaning  of 
those  disagreeable  but  profoundly  natural  scenes,  which"  shocked 
those  advocates  of  rhodomontade  in  tragedy  who  make  Admetus 
vie  with  his  wife  in  heroism.  If  M.  Patin  holds  that  such  senti- 
ments, though  natural,  are  concealed  within  the  breast,  and 
never  confessed,  he  forgets  that  Euripides  wrote  in  a  vastly  more 
outspoken  society  than  ours. 

This  curious  and  very  comic  dialogue  is,  however,  interrupted 
by  the  entrance  of  Heracles,  who  comes  on  his  journey  to 
visit  his  guest  friend,  and  is  received  with  the  truest  hospitality 
by  Admetus,  who  conceals  his  misfortune,  in  order  to  make  his 
friend  at  home.  As  M.  Patin  observes,  the  height  of  pathos 
already  attained  would  be  impossible  to  sustain,  and  therefore 
the  tone  of  the  play  is  most  skilfully  changed.1  The  rollicking 
and  convivial  turn  of  Heracles  is  in  sharp  discord  with  the 

1  The  contrast  of  grief  and  of  mirth,  brought  out  by  this  scene,  which 
greatly  disgusted  Voltaire,  and  is  totally  opposed  to  French  notions  of 
tragic  dignity,  has  been  by  later  French  critics  compared  with  the  musi- 
cians' scene  near  the  end  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  It  is  remarkable  that 
Milton's  preface  to  the  Samson  Agonistes,  which  adopts  the  tone  of  the 
French  drama  (I  suppose  quite  independently),  specially  censures  the  in- 
troduction of  low  comic  characters  in  tragedy,  and  sets  up  the  great  Greek 
tragedies  as  the  proper  models,  apparently  in  opposition  to  Shakspeare's 
(school. 


328  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvir. 

profound  grief  of  the  household,  and  no  one  is  more  pained 
by  it  than  the  worthy  hero  himself,  who  with  true  practical 
energy  sets  about  at  once  to  rescue  Alcestis  from  death,  and 
so  requite  his  friend  for  his  kindness.  The  character  of  Heracles 
is  not  inferior  in  drawing  to  any  of  the  rest,  and  every  fair  critic 
will  be  justly  astonished  at  this  profound  and  curious  antici- 
pation of  many  strong  points  in  the  modern  drama.  The  chorus 
is  throughout  a  sympathetic  spectator  of  the  action,  and  the 
choral  odes  are  not  only  highly  poetical  and  elegantly  con- 
structed, but  all  strictly  to  the  point.  Thus  even  in  the  ode 
which  is  supposed  to  express  the  poet's  mind,1  the  learning 
alluded  to  by  the  chorus  is  that  Thracian  learning  which  was 
naturally  accessible  to  Thessalians.  The  usual  attacks  on  Euri- 
pides' lyrics  have  therefore  no  place  here. 

§  201.  There  is  a  strange  external  resemblance  between  the 
concluding  scene  and  that  of  the  Winter's  Tale,  which  has  not 
escaped  the  commentators.  No  subject  has  proved  more  attrac- 
tive than  this  beautiful  legend,  and  yet  no  one  has  ever  ap- 
proached in  excellence  its  treatment  by  Euripides.  There  is  an 
old  Indian  parallel  in  the  Mahabharata,  where  Savitri,  like 
Alcestis,  rescues  from  the  power  of  Yama,  the  Lord  of  the  nether 
world,  her  husband's  life.  Euripides'  play  was  parodied  by  Anti- 
phanes  in  a  comedy  brought  out  in  the  io6th  Olympiad.  There 
were  two  Latin  versions,  one  by  Attius,  and  another  of  doubtful 
authorship.  Buchanan  produced  a  Latin  translation  in  1543, 
which  was  acted  by  the  pupils  of  the  College  de  Bordeaux.  It  is 
not  worth  while  specifying  the  series  of  travesties  or  modifica- 
tions which  occupied  the  French  stage  from  1600  to  the  end  of 
the  last  century.  Racine,  it  may  be  observed,  turns  aside  in 
the  Preface  to  his  Iphigenie  to  defend  it  against  the  shallow 
criticism  of  his  day.  Gluck's  famous  music  has  perpetuated 
through  Europe  a  very  poor  Italian  libretto  by  Calzabigi  in 
1776.  But  in  1798  Alfieri,  who  had  abandoned  writing,  was 
so  struck  with  the  play,  which  he  then  learnt  to  know  in  the 
original,  that  he  not  only  translated  it,  but  wrote  an  Alcestis  of 
his  own,  which  was  published  after  his  death.  As  usual,  he  has 

1  vv.  962,  sq.  :  «7»  Sia  Mou<ras 

/cal  jAfrdpfftos  j)|a  K.T.\. 


CH.  xvii.  THE  MEDEA.  329 

made  all  the  characters  great  stage  heroes  at  the  sacrifice 
not  only  of  nature  but  of  all  real  interest.  Like  the  French 
imitators,  he  makes  Admetus,  and  even  Pheres,  heroes,  and 
creates  a  romantic  ground  of  natural  love  and  respect  for  the 
sacrifice  of  Alcestis,  and  for  a  competition  between  husband  and 
wife,  which  completely  spoils  Euripides'  deep  and  subtle  plan. 
Translations  and  moderately  faithful  imitations  were  produced 
on  the  Paris  stage  in  1844  and  1847  ;  others  have  been  since 
published  in  France.  Among  English  poets  Milton  has  alluded 
to  the  legend  in  his  23rd  sonnet, 

Methought  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint 
Brought  to  me,  like  Alcestis,  from  the  grave  ; 

and  recently  Mr.  Wm.  Morris  has  given  a  beautiful  and  original 
version,  not  at  all  Euripidean,  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Earthly 
Paradise.  There  is  a  good  translation  by  Banks  (1849).  By  far 
the  best  translation  is  Mr.  Browning's,  in  \ti&Balaustion's  Adven- 
ture, but  it  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  he  did  not  render  the 
choral  odes  into  lyric  verse.  No  one  has  more  thoroughly 
appreciated  the  mean  features  of  Admetus  and  Pheres,  and 
their  dramatic  propriety.  A  tolerably  faithful  transcript,  adapted 
for  the  lyrical  stage  by  Frank  Murray  (from  Potter's  version), 
was  set  to  music  by  Henry  Gadsby,  on  the  model  of  Mendels- 
sohn's Antigone,  which  seems  likely  to  inspire  a  good  many 
imitations.  There  are  excellent  special  editions  by  Monk  and 
G.  Hermann,  as  well  as  a  recension  by  G.  Dindorf. 

§  202.  The  Medea  came  out  in  431  B.C.  along  with  the 
poet's  Philoctetes,  Dictys,  and  the  satyric  Reapers  (the  last  was 
early  lost).  It  was  based  upon  a  play  of  Neophron's,  and  only 
obtained  the  third  prize,  Euphorion  being  first,  and  Sophocles 
second.  It  may  accordingly  be  regarded  as  a  failure  in  its 
day — an  opinion  apparently  confirmed  by  the  faults  (viz.  ^Egeus 
and  the  winged  chariot)  selected  from  it  as  specimens  in  Aris- 
totle's Poetic.  There  is  considerable  evidence  of  there  being  a 
second  edition  of  the  play,  and  many  of  the  variants,  or  so- 
called  interpolations,  seem  to  arise  from  both  versions  being 
preserved  and  confused.  Nevertheless  there  was  no  play  of 
Euripides  more  praised  and  imitated  by  both  Romans  and 


330  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH. xvn. 

moderns.  It  is  too  well  known  to  demand  any  close  analysis 
here.  The  whole  interest  turns  upon  the  delineation  of  the 
furious  passion  of  Medea,  and  her  devices  to  punish  those  who 
have  offended  her.  The  other  characters,  with  the  exception 
of  the  two  aged  and  faithful  servants,  who  admirably  introduce 
the  action,  are  either  mean  or  colourless.  lason  is  a  sort  of 
^neas,  who  endeavours  to  justify  his  desertion  of  his  wife  by 
specious  falsehoods,  and  is  not  even,  like  the  hero  of  Virgil,  in- 
cited by  the  voice  of  the  gods.  His  grief  for  his  children  is 
considered  by  some  critics  to  atone  for  these  grave  defects. 
The  rest  are  not  worth  mentioning,  if  we  except  the  chorus  of 
Corinthian  women,  which  in  this  play  justifies  the  censure  of  the 
critics,  inasmuch  as  it  coolly  admits  the  confidences  of  Medea 
and  hears  fearful  plots  against  the  king  and  the  princess  of  the 
land,  without  offering  any  resistance.  It  remonstrates  but  feebly 
even  with  her  proposed  murder  of  her  children.  The  most 
celebrated  chorus,  which  is  a  beautiful  eulogy  upon  Athens, 
is  merely  suggested  by  the  accident  that  ./Egeus,  its  king, 
is  about  to  harbour  a  sorceress  and  a  wholesale  murderess, 
even  of  her  own  family.  Yet  the  passage,  though  quite  irrele- 
vant, is  very  famous.1  The  whole  episode  of^Egeus,  who  is 
introduced  in  order  that  the  omnipotent  sorceress,  with  her 
winged  chariot,  may  not  be  cast  out  without  a  refuge,  has  been 
justly  censured  in  the  Poetic  and  elsewhere  as  a  means  not 
required,  and  as  an  otiose  excrescence  to  the  play,  not  without 
offensive  details.2  Nevertheless  the  vehement  and  command- 
ing figure  of  the  heroine  has  fascinated  the  great  majority  of 
critics,  who,  like  every  public,  seem  to  miss  finer  points,  and 
appreciate  only  the  strong  lines,  and  the  prominent  features  of 
violent  and  unnatural  passion. 

M.  Patin3  draws  a  most  interesting  comparison  with  the  Tra- 

1  vv.  824-45. 

2  If  Medea,   as  some   critics  suppose,   and  as  the  chorus  appears  to 
assume  (v.  1385),  really  offers  herself  in  marriage  to  the  childless  ^Egeus 
in  this  scene,   I  can  hardly  conceive   Aristophanes  passing  over  such  a 
feature.     According  to  the  legend,  she  did  live  with  him,  and  bore  him  a 
son  called  Medus.     She  seems  to  have  appeared  as  his  wife  in  Euripides' 
tragedy  of  ^Egeus,  in  which  she  endeavours  to  poison  Theseus. 

3  Euripide,  i.  p.  118. 


CH.  XVIT.  MEDEA'S  IRRESOLUTION.  331 

chinice  of  Sophocles,  which  certainly  bears  some  relation  of  con- 
scious contrast  to  the  Mcdca,  but  unfortunately  we  do  not  know 
which  of  the  two  plays  was  the  earlier,  and  therefore  which  of 
the  poets  meant  to  criticise  or  improve  upon  the  other.  I  ven- 
ture to  suppose  that  Sophocles  desired  to  paint  a  far  more 
natural  and  womanly  picture  of  the  sufferings  of  a  deserted 
wife,  who,  without  the  power  and  wickedness  of  Medea,  still 
destroys  her  deceiver,  and  brings  ruin  on  herself,  in  spite  of  her 
patience  and  long-suffering.  The  coincidence  of  the  two  plays, 
the  foreign  residence  of  both  heroines,  the  poisoned  robe,  the 
pretended  contentment  of  both  to  attain  their  ends,  is  very 
striking.  But  the  Trachinice,  in  rny  opinion  the  finer  play,  has 
made  no  mark  in  the  world  compared  to  the  Medea,  whose 
fierce  fury  has  always  been  strangely  admired. 

The  Greek  critics  even  went  so  far  as  to  censure  what  we 
should  call  the  only  great  and  affecting  feature  of  the  play — 
the  irresolution  and  tears  of  the  murderess,1  when  she  has  re- 
solved to  sacrifice  her  innocent  children  for  the  mere  purpose 
of  torturing  her  faithless  husband.  This  criticism  is  apparently 
quoted  in  the  Greek  argument  as  the  opinion  of  Dicaearchus 
and  of  Aristotle.  Surely  it  may  be  affirmed,  that  if  this  feature 
caused  the  failure  of  the  piece,  we  may  indeed  thank  Euripides 
for  having  violated  his  audience's  notions  of  consistency.  The 
scene  of  irresolution  and  of  alternation  between  jealous  fury 
and  human  pity  must  always  have  been,  as  it  now  is,  a  capital 
occasion  for  a  great  display  of  genius  in  the  actor  or  actress  of 
the  part,  and  this  is  doubtless  the  real  cause  of  the  permanent 
hold  the  piece  has  taken  upon  the  world.  I  may  also  call 
attention  to  the  great  speech  of  Medea  to  lason,2  which  argues 
indeed  the  very  strongest  case,  but  is  nevertheless,  especially 
at  its  conclusion,  an  admirable  piece  of  rhetoric. 

§  203.  We  actually  hear  of  six  Greek Medeas,  besides  the  early 
play  of  Neophron,3  not  to  speak  of  the  comic  parodies.  Ennius 

1  vv.  IO2I,  sq.  J  vv.  465,  sq. 

3  The  text  of  the  vir69tffis  to  our  Medea,  which  mentions  this  play, 
being  corrupt,  some  critics  have  thought  that  the  play  of  Neophron,  from 
which  Stobteus  ciffcs  the  monologue  of  Medea,  was  an  imitation  by  a  poet 
of  the  date  of  Alexander.  I  do  not  think  the  author  of  the  argument  can 
possibly  have  meant  this,  however  the  words  are  taken. 


332  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  L1TERA  TURE.  CH.  xvil. 

imitated  the  play  of  Euripides,1  and  both  Cicero  and  Brutus 
are  said  to  have  been  reading  it  or  citing  it  in  their  last 
moments — no  mean  distinction  for  any  tragedy.  The  opening 
lines  are  very  often  cited  in  an  elegant  version  by  Phaedrus. 
Horace  too  alludes  to  it,  and  Ovid's  earliest  work  was  a 
Medea,  which  was  acted  on  the  Roman  stage  with  applause, 
when  the  author,  years  after,  was  in  exile.  It  is  praised  by 
Tacitus  and  Quintilian,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  mere 
translation  from  Euripides.  There  remains  to  us,  unfortunately, 
a  Medea  among  the  works  of  Seneca,  who  could  not  refrain 
from  handling  a  subject  so  congenial  to  Roman  tastes.  But  in 
this  play  the  magic  powers  of  the  sorceress  are  the  great 
feature,  the  age  having  turned  from  an  effete  polytheism  to  the 
gloomy  horrors  of  magic  and  witchcraft.  The  fury  of  the  mur- 
deress is  exaggerated  even  beyond  the  picture  of  Euripides, 
and  the  whole  play  glitters  with  the  false  tinsel  of  artificial 
rhetoric.  Buchanan  gave  a  Latin  version  of  the  play,  and 
Dolce  an  Italian,  but  Perouse  followed  Seneca  in  his  French 
play  (1553),  as  did  Corneille  (1635),  and  Longepierre  (1694). 
These  poor  imitations  dilated  on  the  amours  of  lason,  and  re- 
presented Creon  and  his  daughter  in  a  sort  of  auto  dafe  on  the 
stage  ;  but  Voltaire,  in  criticising  them  and  Seneca's  Medea, 
thinks  fit  to  include  the  Greek  play,  which,  as  M.  Patin  ob- 
serves, he  seems  not  to  have  read.  There  was  an  English  ver- 
sion by  Glover  in  1761,  which  humanises  and  christianises  both 
lason  and  Medea,  and  makes  her  crime  the  result  of  a  delirious 
moment.  Grillparzer's  trilogy  (the  Golden  Fleece)  in  its  last  play 
likewise  softens  the  terrible  sorceress,  and  drives  her  to  the  crime 
by  the  heartlessness  of  her  children,  who  will  not  return  to  her 
from  the  amiable  Creusa,  when  the  latter  desires  to  surrender 
them.  The  same  features  mark  the  Medeas  of  Niccolini,  of 
Lucas,  brought  out  in  Paris  in  1855,  and  of  Ernest  Legouve, 

1  Cicero  speaks  of  it  as  a  literal  translation  from  the  Greek,  but  this  is 
not  verified  by  the  fragments,  which  both  in  this  and  the  other  Ennian 
imitations  cannot  be  found  in  our  Greek  originals.  This  variation  from 
the  models  is  too  persistent  to  be  accounted  for  by  first  editions,  or  by 
emended  copies  of  the  Greek  plays  used  by  Ennius,  an4  must  be  taken  as 
conclusive  evidence  that  his  versions  were  free  renderings,  paraphrasing  the 
sense,  and  changing  the  metres,  as  we  can  show  from  extant  fragments. 


CH  xvir.  THE  HIPPOLYTUS.  333 

which  in  its  Italian  dress  has  afforded  Mde.  Ristori  one  of  her 
greatest  tragic  triumphs,  and  which  is  still  performed  in  Paris. 
But  the  play  is  no  longer  the  savage  and  painful  play  of  Euri- 
pides, and  is,  I  confess,  to  me  very  superior.  The  opera  offers 
us  Hoffmann's  elegant  version,  set  to  music  by  Cherubini,  and 
I  might  add  the  Norma  of  Bellini,  where  the  main  situation  is 
copied  from  the  Medea,  though  compassion  prevails  over  the  fire 
of  jealousy,  and  the  children's  lives  are  spared.  The  most  im- 
portant modern  edition  is  that  of  Kirchhoff  (1852). 

Klinger's  modern  reproduction  is  praised  by  the  Germans 
The  beautiful  epic  version  of  Mr.  Morris,  in  the  last  book  of 
his  Life  and  Death  of  lason,  handles  the  myth  (as  is  his  wont) 
very  freely,  and  dwells  chiefly  on  the  gradual  estrangement  of 
lason  through  the  love  of  Glauce,  and  the  gradual  relapse  of 
Medea  from  the  peaceful  and  happy  wife  to  the  furious  sorceress. 

§  204.  The  Hippolyttis  ((TTttyaviaQ,  or  crowned,  to  distinguish 
it  from  the  earlier  KaXuTrrdyutroe,  veiled,  of  which  the  expla- 
nation is  now  lost)  appeared  three  years  after  the  Medea,  in 
428  B.C.,  and  is  our  earliest  example  of  a  romantic  subject  in 
the  Greek  drama.1  We  are  told  that  it  obtained  the  first  place 
against  lophon  and  Ion's  competition,  but  we  are  not  told 
whether  or  what  other  plays  accompanied  it,  nor  of  the  plays 
it  defeated.  The  earlier  version  of  the  play  was  not  only  read 
and  admired,  but  possibly  copied  in  the  play  of  Seneca ; 
yet  it  failed  at  Athens,  chiefly,  it  is  thought,  because  of  the 
boldness  with  which  Phsedra  told  her  love  in  person  to  her 
stepson,  and  then  in  person  maligned  him  to  his  father.  In 
Seneca  she  uses  incantations  to  the  moon,  and  justifies  her 
guilt  by  Theseus'  infidelities.  It  is  only  upon  his  death  that 
she  confesses  her  guilt  and  dies.  This  may  have  been  the  plan 
remodelled  in  the  play  before  us,  and  it  is  a  literary  fact  of  no 
small  interest  to  know  that  Euripides  certainly  confessed  his 
earlier  failure  and  strove  to  improve  upon  it,  with  success,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  allowed  the  earlier  form  to  be  circulated. 
For  it  implies  both  a  real  desire  to  please  the  Athenian  audi- 
ence, and  also  a  certain  contempt  for  their  censure,  in  which 
the  smaller  reading  public  of  the  day  probably  supported  him. 

1  We  have  lost  /Eschylus'  Myrmidons,  perhaps  an  earlier  example. 


334  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

The  delineation  of  the  passion  of  Phaedra  is  the  great 
feature  of  the  play,  and  it  is  indeed  drawn  with  a  master  hand. 
But  in  one  point1  the  modern  reader  feels  shocked  or  dissatisfied, 
in  her  sudden  determination,  not  adequately  motived  in  the 
play,  of  involving  Hippolytus  in  her  ruin  by  a  bare  falsehood, 
and  it  is  peculiarly  Greek  that  this  odious  crime  should  not  be 
held  to  prevent  her  dying  with  honour  and  good  fame(evK\lr)c). 
In  our  day  we  should  be  more  disposed  to  pardon  unchastity 
than  this  deliberate  and  irremediable  lying,  nor  would  any 
modern  poet  paint  it  in  a  woman  of  Phaedra's  otherwise  good 
and  noble  character. 

All  the  advances  to  Hippolytus,  and  the  inducements  to 
crime,  which  Phaedra  at  first  honestly  and  nobly  resists,  are 
suggested  by  her  nurse,  a  feeble  and  immoral  old  woman,  who 
perhaps  talks  too  well,  but  plays  a  very  natural  part.  The 
character  of  Hippolytus,  which  is  admirably  sustained  through 
the  play,  is  cold  and  harsh,  and  what  we  might  call  offensively 
holy.  It  was  a  character  with  which  no  Greek  public  could 
feel  much  sympathy,  as  asceticism  was  disliked,  and  even  cen- 
sured on  principle.  There  is  indeed  no  commonplace  more 
insisted  upon  all  through  the  tragedies  than  that  the  delights  of 
moderate  love  (as  compared  with  the  agonies  of  extreme  pas- 
sion) are  to  be  enjoyed  as  the  best  and  most  real  pleasure  in  this 
mortal  life.  It  is,  therefore,  from  this  point  of  view  that  the 
poet,  while  he  rewards  Hippolytus'  virtue  with  heroic  honours 
after  death,  makes  him  a  capital  failure  in  life.  The  hatred 
of  Aphrodite,  who  is  drawn  in  the  worst  and  most  repulsive 
colours,  seems  to  express  the  revenge  of  nature  upon  those  who 
violate  her  decrees.  Probably  the  spite  of  Aphrodite,  as  well 
as  the  weakness  of  Artemis,  the  patron  goddess  of  the  hero, 
is  also  intended  to  lower  the  conception  of  these  deities  in 
the  public  mind.  It  is  a  rednctio  ad  absurdum  of  Divine 
Providence,  when  the  most  awful  misfortunes  of  men  are 
ascribed  to  the  malice  of  hostile  and  the  impotence  of  friendly 
deities.  Some  good  critics  have  indeed  defended  Artemis,  and 
called  her  a  noble  character  in  this  play ;  but  what  shall  we  say 
of  a  deity  who,  when  impotent  to  save  her  favourite,  threatens 2 
1  Aristoph.  Apology,  p.  26.  2  v.  1420. 


CH.  xvn.  HIPPOLYTUS   OATH.  335 

that  she  will  be  avenged  by  slaying  with  her  arrows  some 
favourite  of  Aphrodite?  This  is  verily  to  make  mankind 
the  sport  of  malignant  gods.  Euripides  cannot  have  given  them 
these  miserable  parts,  without  intending  to  satirise  the  popular 
creed,  and  so  to  open  the  way  for  higher  and  purer  religious 
conceptions.  The  chorus  is  a  weak,  and  sometimes  irrele- 
vant spectator  of  the  action,  a  necessary  consequence,  indeed,  of 
its  being  present  during  the  whole  of  the  action,  and,  there- 
fore, not  fairly  to  be  censured.  One  very  elegant  chorus  on 
the  power  of  Eros l  may  be  compared  with  the  parallel  ode  in 
Sophocles'  Antigone.  There  is  a  chorus  of  attendants  (what  was 
called  a  irapa^op^yrjua)  which  accompanies  Hippolytus  at  the 
opening,  and  which  is  distinct  from  the  proper  chorus — a  rare 
device  in  Greek  tragedy.  Nothing  will  show  more  clearly  the 
sort  of  criticism  to  which  Euripides  has  been  subjected,  in  ancient 
and  modern  times,  than  the  general  outcry  against  a  celebrated 
line  uttered  by  Hippolytus :  '  My  tongue  has  sworn,  but  my 
mind  has  taken  no  oath  '  (//  yXw^ra'  o^uwjuo^', »/  e)e  ^pi/vd^w/jorof1). 
He  exclaims  this  in  his  fury,  when  the  old  nurse  adjures  him  by 
his  oath  not  to  betray  her  wretched  mistress.  It  seems  indeed 
hard  that  a  dramatic  poet  should  be  judged  by  the  excited 
utterances  of  his  characters,  but  it  is  worse  than  hard,  it  is  shame- 
fully unjust,  that  the  critics  should  not  have  read  on  fifty  lines, 
where  the  same  character  Hippolytus,  on  calmer  consideration,2 
declares  that,  were  he  not  bound  by  the  sanctity  of  his  oath, 
he  would  certainly  inform  Theseus.  And  he  dies  simply 
because  he  will  not  violate  this  very  oath,  stolen  from  him 
when  off  his  guard.  I  doubt  whether  any  criticism,  ancient  or 
modern,  contains  among  its  myriad  injustices,  whether  of  negli- 
gence, ignorance,  or  deliberate  malice,  a  more  flagrantly  absurd 
accusation.  And  yet  Aristophanes,  who  leads  the  way  in  this 
sort  of  falsehood,  is  still  extolled  by  some  as  -the  greatest  and 
deepest  exponent  of  the  faults  of  Euripides. 

^schylus  and  Sophocles,  as  might  be  expected,  did  not 
touch  this  subject,  but  Agathon  appears  to  have  treated  it.3 

1  vv.  525-64 ;  translated  for  me  by  Mr.  Browning  in  my  monograph 
on  Euripides,  p.  116. 

2  v.  657.  3  Aristoph.  Thesmoph.  153. 


356  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvir. 

There  was  an  Hippolytus  by  Lycophron,  and  though  the  older 
Roman  tragedians  have  left  us  no  trace  of  a  version,  the  allu- 
sions of  Virgil  in  the  ^Eneid,1  and  the  perpetual  recurrence 
of  the  subject  in  Ovid,2  show  how  well  it  was  known  in  the 
golden  age  of  Roman  literature. 

The  Hippolytus  of  Seneca,  from  which  the  scene  of  Phaedra's 
personal  declaration  to  Hippolytus  was  adopted  by  Racine 
in  his  famous  play,  is  still  praised  by  French  critics.  It  was 
highly  esteemed,  and  even  preferred  to  the  Greek  play,  in  the 
Renaissance.  It  was  acted  in  Latin  at  Rome  in  1483,  and 
freely  rehandled  by  Gamier,  in  a  French  version,  in  1573. 
The  next  celebrated  French  version  was  that  of  Gilbert,  Queen 
Christina's  French  minister  in  1646.  But  his  very  title, 
Hippolyte  on  le  Garden  insensible,  sounds  strange,  and  the  play 
is  said  nevertheless  to  have  admitted  a  great  deal  of  gallantry 
in  the  hero.  In  1677  Racine  produced  his  famous  Phedre,  of 
which  the  absolute  and  comparative  merits  have  been  discussed 
in  a  library  of  criticism.  A  hostile  clique  got  up  an  opposition 
version  by  Pradon,  and  for  a  moment  defeated  and  disgusted 
the  poet,  but  the  very  pains  taken  by  Schlegel,  and  even  by 
French  critics,  to  sustain  Euripides  against  him,  shows  the  real 
importance  of  the  piece.  For  a  long  time,  in  the  days  ol 
Voltaire  and  La  Harpe,  and  of  the  revolt  against  antiquity, 
Euripides  was  utterly  scouted  in  comparison.  But  now-a-days, 
when  the  wigs  and  the  powder,  the  etiquette  and  the  artifice,  of 
the  French  court  of  the  seventeenth  century  can  hardly  be  toler- 
ated as  the  decoration  for  a  Greek  tragedy,  it  is  rare  to  find 
the  real  merits  of  Racine  admitted,  in  the  face  of  such  tasteless 
and  vulgar  anachronism.  Yet  for  all  that,  Racine's  Phedre 
is  a  great  play,  and  it  is  well  worth  while  to  read  the  poet's  short 
and  most  interesting  preface,  in  which  he  gives  the  reasons  for 
his  deviations.  .  He  grounds  the  whole  merit  of  his  tragedy,  as 
Aristophanes  makes  ^schylus  and  Euripides  argue,  not  on  its 
poetical  features,  but  on  its  moral  lessons.  He  has  spoilt  Hip- 
polytus by  giving  him  a  passion  for  the  princess  Aricie,  whom 
Theseus,  for  state  reasons,  had  forbidden  to  marry.  But  this 

1  vii.  761. 

2  Fasti,  iii.  266,  vi.  733  ;  Metam.  xv.  492  ;  Epist.  Her.  iv. 


CH.  xvil.  THE  ANDROMACHE.  337 

additional  cause  of  Hippolytus'  rejection  of  Phaedra's  suit  adds 
the  fury  of  jealousy  to  her  madness,  and  is  the  main  cause  of 
her  false  charge  against  him,  thus  giving  a  motive  where  there 
is  hardly  a  sufficient  one  in  Euripides.  The  passage  in  which 
she  shrinks  from  the  death  she  is  seeking,  at  the  thought  ot 
appearing  before  her  father  Minos,  the  judge  of  the  dead,  is 
very  finely  conceived  ;  on  the  whole,  however,  she  exhibits  too 
much  of  her  passion  in  personal  pleading  on  the  stage,  and  so 
falls  far  behind  Euripides'  Phsedra  in  delicacy. 

There  was  an  English  Phaedra  by  Edmund  Smith  in  1707, 
based  on  both  Racine's  and  Pradon's,  and  like  them  full  of  court 
intrigues,  captains  of  the  household,  prime  ministers,  and  the 
like.  There  were  operas  on  it  attempted  by  Rameau  (1733), 
and  by  Lemoine  (1786),  neither  of  which  is  now  known.  The 
Greek  play  was  put  on  the  German  stage  faithfully  in  1851,  but 
was  found  inferior  to  Racine's  for  such  a  performance.  There 
are  special  editions  by  Musgrave,  Valckenaer,  and  Monk,  of 
great  value.1  We  know  from  the  fragments  of  lost  plays,  and 
from  the  criticisms  of  Aristophanes,  that  Euripides  chose  the 
painful  subject  of  a  great  criminal  passion  for  several  plays,  the 
Phrixus,  Sthenobtxa  (Bellerophori),  and  certainly  the  Phoenix, 
built  upon  the  narrative  of  the  aged  hero  in  the  ninth  book  of  the 
Iliad.  If  we  could  trust  Aristophanes,  we  might  suppose  that 
he  was  the  first  to  venture  on  such  a  subject,  but  the  allusions 
of  the  critics  to  Neophron's  Medea,  and  the  traces  of  similar 
subjects  in  the  fragments  of  Sophocles,  make  it  uncertain 
whether  he  was  the  originator,  as  he  certainly  was  the  greatest 
master,  in  this  very  modern  department  of  tragedy. 

§  205.  The  Andromache  need  not  occupy  us  long,  being 
one  of  the  worst  constructed,  and  least  interesting,  plays  of 
Euripides.  The  date  is  uncertain,  as  it  was  not  brought 
out  at  Athens,  perhaps  not  till  after  the  poet's  death,  and  is 
only  to  be  fixed  doubtfully  by  the  bitter  allusions  to  Sparta, 
with  which  it  teems.  It  has  indeed  quite  the  air  of  a 
political  pamphlet  under  the  guise  of  a  tragedy.  It  must, 

1  I  can  recommend  a  very  faithful  poetical  version  by  Mr.  M.  P.  Fitz- 
gerald (London,  1867),  in  a  volume  before  cited,  and  entitled  The  Crowned 
Hippolytus,  with  selections  from  the  lyric  and  bucolic  poets  appended. 

VOL.  I. — 15 


338  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

therefore,  have  been  composed  during  the  Poloponnesian  war, 
possibly  about  419  B.C.1  The  character  of  Andromache  (now 
the  slave  and  concubine  of  Neoptolemus),  who  opens  the  play 
as  a  suppliant  telling  her  tale  and  mourning  her  woes  in  elegiacs 
(a  metre  never  used  elsewhere  in  our  extant  tragedies),  is  well 
conceived,  and  the  scene  in  which  her  child,  whom  she  had 
hidden,  is  brought  before  her  by  Menelaus,  and  threatened  with 
instant  death  if  she  will  not  leave  the  altar,  is  full  of  true  Euri- 
pidean  pathos.  The  laments  of  mother  and  child,  as  they  are 
led  away  to  execution,  are  in  the  same  strain,  but  are  inter- 
rupted by  the  surprise  of  Peleus  appearing  just  in  time — a  rare 
expedient  in  Greek  tragedy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  characters 
of  the  jealous  wife  Hermione,  and  her  father  Menelaus,  are 
violent,  mean,  and  treacherous  beyond  endurance.  They 
represent  the  vulgarest  tyrants,  and  are  rather  fit  for  Alfieri's 
stage.  All  this  is  intended  as  a  direct  censure  on  Sparta, 
a  feeling  in  which  the  poet  hardly  varied,  as  Bergk  justly  ob- 
serves, though  it  is  seldom  so  unpleasantly  obtruded  upon  us  as 
in  this  play.3  When  Andromache  and  her  child  are  saved,  after 
a  long  and  angry  altercation  between  Peleus  and  Menelaus,  the 
play  is  properly  concluded,  but  is  awkwardly  expanded  by  a 
sort  of  afterpiece,  in  which  Hermione  rushes  in,  beside  hersell 
with  fear  at  what  she  has  dared  in  the  absence  of  her  husband. 
This  emotional  and  absurd  panic  opens  the  way  for  the  appear- 
ance of  Orestes,  with  whom  she  at  once  arranges  a  manage  de 
convenance  of  the  most  prosaic  kind,  and  flies.  Then  follows  the 
elaborate  narrative  of  the  murder  of  her  former  husband  Neop- 
tolemus at  Delphi,  owing  to  the  plots  of  Orestes.  The  lamen- 

1  The  choral  metres,  which  are  chiefly  dactylico-trochaic,  instead  of  the 
glyconics  afterwards  in  favour,  and  which  Dindorf  considers  a  surer  internal 
mark   than  general  anti-Spartan  allusions,   point  to  an  earlier  date,  and 
agree  with  the  schol.  on  v.  445,  which  conjectures  the  play  to  have  been 
composed  at  the  opening  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.     On  the  other  hand, 
the  allusion  to  this  play  at  the  end  of  the  Orestes  (vv.  1653,  sq.)  seems  as 
if  its  memory  were  yet  fresh,  and  suggests  a  later  date. 

2  The  Helena  is  an  exception  (below,  p.  353).    When  Menelaus  asserts 
(w.  374  and  585)  that  he  will  kill  Neoptolemus'  slaves,  because  friends 
should  have  all  their  property  in  common,  this  seems  like  a  parody  on  the 
habits,  or  supposed  habits,  of  the  club  life  led  by  the  Spartans  at  home. 


CH.  xvii.  THE  HERACLEIDsE.  339 

tations  of  Peleus,  and  the  divine  interposition,  and  settlement  of 
the  future,  by  Thetis,  conclude  the  play.  Though  justly  called  a 
second-rate  play  by  the  scholiasts,  it  was  well  enough  known  to 
be  quoted  by  Clitus  l  on  the  undue  share  of  glory  obtained  by  the 
generals  of  soldiers  who  bore  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day,  and 
thus  it  cost  him  his  life  at  the  hands  of  the  infuriated  Alexander. 
The  Andromache  Q{  Ennius,  of  which  we  have  a  considerable  frag- 
ment, seems  to  embrace  the  time  of  the  capture  of  Troy,  and  not 
the  period  of  this  play  ;  but  the  5th  book  of  Vergil's  ^Eneid  is 
evidently  composed  with  a  clear  recollection  of  it.2  The 
famous  Andromaque  of  Racine  only  borrows  the  main  facts 
from  the  story  as  found  in  Euripides  and  Vergil,  and  expands  it 
by  introducing  a  motive  which  does  not  exist  in  the  Greek 
play,  that  of  the  passion  of  love.  He  moreover  felt  bound  to 
soften  and  alter  what  Euripides  had  frankly  put  forward,  not 
only  as  the  usage  of  heroic  times,  but  even  of  his  own  day — the 
enforced  concubinage  of  female  captives,  however  noble,  and 
the  very  slight  social  stain  which  such  a  misfortune  entailed. 
On  this  I  have  elsewhere  commented.3  The  ode  on  the 
advantages  of  noble  birth  4  strikes  me  as  peculiarly  Pindaric  in 
tone  and  diction — more  so  than  any  other  of  Euripides'  choral 
songs.  The  tirade 5  against  the  dangers  of  admitting  gossiping 
female  visitors  to  one's  house  seems  just  like  what  Aristophanes 
would  recommend,  and  may  be  a  serious  advice  intended  by 
the  poet. 

§  206.  The  Heradeida,  a  play  less  studied  than  it  deserves, 
owes  some  of  this  neglect  to  its  bad  preservation.  It  dates 
somewhere  in  Ol.  88-90,  and  celebrates  the  honourable  conduct 
of  Athens  in  protecting  the  suppliant  children  of  Heracles,  and 
her  victory  over  the  insolent  Argive  king  Eurystheus,  who  in- 
vades Attica  to  recover  the  fugitives.  The  play  was  obviously 
intended  as  a  political  document,  directed  against  the  Argive 
party  in  Athens  during  the  Peloponnesian  War.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  at  this  agitated  time  the  tragic  stage,  which  should 

1  vv.  693,  sq. 

*  The  contrasts  between  the  conception  of  Vergil  and  that  of  Euripides 
have  been  admirably  pointed  out  by  Patin,  Euripide,  i.  p.  291. 

3  Social  Greece,  p.  1 19.  <  vv.  764,  sq.  s  vv.  930,  sq. 


340  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

have  been  devoted  to  joys  and  griefs  above  mean  earthly 
things,  was  degraded,  as  its  modern  analogue  the  pulpit  has 
often  been,  to  be  a  political  platform,  but  a  platform  on  which 
one  side  only  can  have  its  say.  But  together  with  this  main 
idea,  Euripides  gives  us  a  great  many  beautiful  and  affecting 
situations,  and  it  may  be  said  that  for  tragic  interest  none  of  his 
plays  exceed  the  first  part,  ending,  unfortunately,  with  a  huge 
gap  after  the  629^1  line.  Many  critics  have  censured  it  in 
ignorance  of  this  capital  fact,  and  also  of  some  lesser  mutila- 
tions at  the  end,  which  is  now,  as  we  have  it,  clearly  unfinished, 
and  therefore  unsatisfactory.1 

The  play  opens  with  the  altercation  between  the  violent 
and  brutal  Argive  herald,  Kopreus,  who  is  very  like  the  herald 
in  yEschylus'  Supplices,  and  the  faithful  lolaos,  who  in  extreme 
age  and  decrepitude  endeavours  to  guard  the  children  of  his  old 
comrade  in  arms.  It  is  remarkable  how  Greek  tragedians  seem 
consistently  to  ascribe  this  impudence  and  bullying  to  heralds, 
so  unlike  those  of  Homer.  The  chorus  interferes,  and  presently 
Demophon  appears,  and  dismisses  the  insolent  herald,  not  with- 
out being  seriously  tempted  to  do  him  violence.  The  poet 
evidently  had  before  him  the  other  version  of  the  legend,  that 
this  herald  was  killed  by  the  Athenians.  But  when  the  Athen- 
ian king  has  undertaken  the  risk  of  protecting  the  fugitives, 
the  prophets  tell  him  that  a  noble  virgin  must  be  sacrificed  to 
ensure  his  victory.  This  news  gives  rise  to  a  pathetic  scene  of 
despair  in  lolaos,  who  has  been  driven  from  city  to  city,  and 
sees  no  end  to  the  persecution.  But  the  old  man's  idle  offer 
of  his  own  life  is  interrupted  by  the  entrance  of  Macaria,  one 
of  the  Heracleidse,  who  when  she  hears  of  the  oracle,  calmly 
offers  herself,  despising  even  the  chance  of  the  lot  among  her 
sisters.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  drawing  of  this  noble  girl, 
one  of  Euripides'  greatest  heroines.  But  unfortunately  the 
play  breaks  off  before  the  narrative  of  her  sacrifice,  and  there 
is  doubtless  also  lost  a  kommos  over  her  by  Alcmena  and  the 

1  These  lacunae  are  obvious  from  the  fact  that  more  than  one  ancient 
citation  from  the  play  is  not  in  our  texts.  Kirchhoff  was  (I  believe)  the 
first  to  lay  stress  on  this,  and  to  seek  the  exact  places  where  the  gap? 
occur. 


CH.  XVIP.  THE  SUPPLICES.  341 

chorus.  The  interest  of  the  spectator  is  then  transferred  to  the 
approaching  battle,  and  the  warlike  fire  of  the  decrepid  lolaos, 
who  insists  on  going  into  the  ranks  ;  and  as  the  putting  on  of 
armour  would,  I  suppose,  have  been  impossible  to  an  actor  on 
the  Greek  stage,  the  messenger,  a  servant  of  Hyllus,  discreetly 
offers  to  carry  it  till  he  has  reached  the  field.  The  manifestly 
comic  drawing  of  lolaos  in  this  scene  appears  to  me  a  satire  on 
some  effete  Athenian  general,  who,  like  our  Crimean  generals, 
undertook  active  service  when  no  longer  fit  for  it.  But  by  a 
miracle,  which  is  presently  narrated,  he  recovers  his  youth,  and, 
with  Hyllus,  defeats  and  captures  Eurystheus.  The  mutilated 
concluding  scene  is  again  a  discussion  of  a  matter  of  present 
interest — the  fate  of  prisoners  taken  in  battle.  Alcmena,  with 
the  ferocity  which  Euripides  generally  depicts  in  old  women,  de- 
mands his  instant  death.  The  chorus  insist  that  by  the  laws 
of  Hellenic  warfare  an  adversary  not  killed  in  battle  cannot  be 
afterwards  slain  without  impiety.  Eurystheus  seems  to  facili- 
tate his  own  death  by  prophesying  that  his  grave  will  serve 
Athens ;  in  this,  very  like  the  later  (Edipus  at  Colonus  of 
Sophocles — a  play  with  which  the  present  has  many  features 
in  common.  The  chorus  appears  to  yield  ;  the  real  settlement 
of  the  dispute  is  lost. 

The  imitations  of  this  play  are  few.  Dauchet's  (1720)  and 
Marmontel's  (1752)  are  said  to  contain  all  the  vices  of  the 
French  tragedy  in  no  ordinary  degree.  The  only  special  edi- 
tion quoted  is  that  of  Elmsley.  To  many  ordinary  students  of 
Greek  literature  the  very  name  of  Macaria  is  unknown. 

§  207.  I  take  up  the  Supplices  next,  of  which  the  date,  also 
uncertain  (most  probably  420  B.C.,  shortly  after  the  battle  of 
Delium),  is  not  far  removed  from  that  of  the  Heracleidce,  and 
of  which  the  plan  is  very  similar,  though  the  politics  are  quite 
different.  For  as  in  the  former  play  hostility  to  Argos,  and  its 
wanton  invasion  of  Attica,  were  prominent,  so  here  alliance  and 
eternal  friendship  with  Argos  are  most  solemnly  inculcated.  If 
it  be  true,  as  all  critics  agree,  that  these  plays  were  brought  on 
the  stage  within  three  or  four  years  of  one  another,  during  the 
shifting  interests  and  alliances  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  it 
will  prove  how  completely  Euripides  regarded  them  as  tem- 


342  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

porary  political  advices,  varying  with  the  situation,  and  in 
which  the  inconsistencies  were  not  of  more  importance  than 
would  be  the  inconsistencies  in  a  volume  of  political  speeches. 
I  think,  moreover,  that  we  may  clearly  perceive  in  the  discus- 
sions on  monarchy,  democracy,  and  general  statecraft,  which 
lead  away  the  characters  from  their  proper  business,  a  growing 
tendency  in  tragedy  to  become  a  written  record,  and  to  appeal 
to  a  reading  public,  instead  of  the  listening  crowd  in  the 
theatre.  Euripides,  in  the  long  and  interesting  debate  between 
the  Theban  herald  and  Theseus,  is  so  conscious  of  this,  that 
he  makes  Theseus  comment  on  the  volubility  of  the  herald  in 
matters  not  concerning  him,  and  wonder  at  his  own  patience  in 
replying  to  him.  It  is  thus  quite  plain  that  what  are  called 
rhetorical  redundancies  in  this  and  other  Euripidean  plays  are 
deliberately  admitted  by  the  poet  as  subservient  to  an  important 
purpose — that  of  the  political  education  of  the  people  from  his 
point  of  view. 

The  author  of  the  argument,  of  which  only  a  fragment 
remains,  regards  the  play  as  an  encomium  of  Athens.  But  this 
direct  or  indirect  laudation  of  Athens  occurs  so  perpetually  all 
through  Greek  tragedy,  that  I  think  it  mistaken  to  make  that 
the  main  object  of  the  play  in  which  it  differs  only  in  degree 
from  so  many  others.  I  think  the  wearisome  recurrence  of 
this  feature,  and  the  favour  with  which  we  know  it  was  received, 
bespeak  a  very  vulgar  vanity  on  the  part  of  the  Attic  public, 
and  a  great  deficiency  in  that  elegance  and  chastity  of  taste 
which  they  and  their  modern  critics  perpetually  arrogate  as 
their  private  property. 

This  play  is  among  the  best  of  Euripides.  After  a  short 
prologue  from  JEthra. — which  is  really  an  indirect  prayer  to 
Demeter  at  Eleusis — the  chorus  enters  with  a  truly  ^Eschylean 
parodos,  as  indeed,  all  through  the  play,  the  chorus  takes  a 
prominent  part  in  the  action.  It  consists  of  the  seven  mothers 
of  the  slain  chiefs  before  Thebes,  together  with  their  seven 
attendants.  At  the  end  of  the  play  there  is,  besides,  a  chorus 
of  the  orphans.  The  long  dialogue  between  Theseus  and 
Adrastus,  who  accompanies  the  suppliants,  is  full  of  beauty,  and 
also  of  proverbial  wisdom,  on  which  account  it  has  been  also 


CH  xvii.  THE  HECUBA.  343 

considerably  interpolated.  Theseus  is,  as  usual,  represented  as 
a  constitutional  monarch;  who  practically  directs  a  democracy 
— probably  on  the  model  afforded  by  Pericles.  But  when  he 
determines  to  help  the  suppliants  and  to  send  a  herald  to 
demand  the  burying  of  the  slain,  he  is  anticipated  by  the  Theban 
herald,  who  comes  to  threaten  Theseus  and  to  warn  him  not  to 
take  these  steps.  The  long  discussion  between  them,  ending,  as 
usual,  in  an  agitated  stretto  of  stichomuthia,1  is  the  most  interest- 
ing exponent  of  the  poet's  political  views  in  all  his  extant  works. 
The  two  divisions  of  seven  in  the  chorus  sing  an  amcebean 
strain  of  anxious  suspense,  till  in  a  few  moments  a  messenger 
comes  in,  and  (in  violation  of  the  unity  of  time)  narrates  at 
length  Theseus'  victory.  Then  come  in  the  bodies  of  the  slain 
chiefs  with  Theseus,  and  there  follows  a  great  lamentation 
scene,  in  which  Adrastus  speaks  the  eloge  of  each.  Presently 
Evadne,  the  wife  of  Capaneus,  and  sister  of  Hippomedon, 
followed  upon  the  stage  by  her  father  Iphis,  from  whom  she 
has  escaped  in  the  madness  of  her  grief,  enters  upon  a  high 
cliff  over  the  stage,  and  casts  herself  into  the  pyre.  The 
laments  of  Iphis  are  written  with  peculiar  grace.  The  con- 
tinued wailing  of  the  two  choruses,  children  and  parents  of  the 
seven  chiefs,  are  interrupted  by  Adrastus'  promise  of  eternal 
gratitude.  Lastly,  Athene  comes  in  ex  machina  in  a  perfectly 
otiose  and  superfluous  manner,  to  enforce  the  details  of  the 
treaty  between  Athens  and  Argos. 

The  subject  had  been  already  treated  in  ^schylus's  Eleu- 
sinians.  The  celebrity  of  the  present  play  may  be  inferred  from 
the  dream  of  Thrasyllus,  on  the  night  before  Arginusse,  that  he 
and  his  six  colleagues  were  victorious  in  playing  the  Phoenissa 
against  the  hostile  leader's  Supplices,  in  the  theatre  of  Athens, 
but  that  all  his  colleagues  were  dead.  Elmsley's  and  G.  Her- 
mann's are  the  best  editions,  Elmsley's  completing  Markland's 
labours. 

§  208.  The  Hecuba  was  brought  out  before  the  Clouds  of 
Aristophanes,  where  it  is  alluded  to  (in  Ol.  89,  i).  From  a 

1  M.  Patin  (ii.  p.  195)  notices  this  just  representation  of  nature  by 
the  Greek  tragic  poets,  for  discussions,  at  first  cool,  are  apt  to  become 
violent,  and  compares  it  to  the  parallel  feature  in  the  modern  opera. 


344  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

further  allusion  in  the  play  itself  to  the  Deliac  festival,  restored 
in  Ol.  88,  3,  it  seems  tolerably  certain  that  it  must  have  ap- 
peared in  Ol.  88,  4  (425  B.C.),  and  may  therefore  have  been 
earlier  than  the  plays  last  mentioned.  But  it  belongs  to  the  same 
period  of  the  poet's  style,  and  differs  considerably  in  this 
respect  from  the  Troades^  which  treats  almost  the  same  sub- 
ject, but  was  brought  out  eight  or  nine  years  later.  I  will 
therefore  not  discuss  them  in  conjunction,  as  some  critics 
have  done,  but  follow  in  preference  the  order  of  time.  The 
Hecuba  has  always  been  a  favourite  play,  and  has  not  only 
been  frequently  imitated,  but  edited  ever  since  Erasmus'  time 
for  school  use.  It  is  by  no  means  so  replete  with  political 
allusions  as  the  Supplices,  and  is  on  the  whole  a  better  tragedy, 
though  not  so  interesting  to  read.  It  treats  of  the  climax  of 
Hecuba's  misfortunes,  the  sacrifice  of  Polyxena  at  the  grave  of 
Achilles,1  and  the  murder  of  Polydorus,  her  youngest  son,  by 
his  Thracian  host,  Polymestor.  The  chorus  of  Trojan  captives 
sings  odes  of  great  beauty,  especially  that  on  the  fall  of  Ilium,2 
but  does  not  enter  into  the  action  of  the  play.  The  pleading  of 
Hecuba  with  Odysseus,  who  comes  to  take  Polyxena,  is  full 
of  pathos ;  and  so  is  the  noble  conduct  of  the  maiden,  who  is 
a  heroine  of  the  same  type  as  Macaria,  but  varied  with  that 
peculiar  art  of  Euripides  which  never  condescends  to  repeat 
itself.  Macaria  has  the  highest  motive  for  her  sacrifice — the 
salvation  of  her  brothers  and  sisters.  Polyxena  is  sacrificed  to 
an  enemy,  and  by  enemies,  and  is  therefore  obliged  to  face 
death  without  any  reward  save  the  escape  from  the  miseries 
and  disgrace  of  slavery.  Yet  though  she  dwells  upon  these  very 
strongly,  she  seems  to  regret  nothing  so  much  as  the  griefs  of 
her  wretched  and  despairing  mother. 

The  narrative  of  her  death  (which  in  Macaria's  case  is  unfor- 
tunately lost)  forms  a  beautiful  conclusion  to  the  former  half  of 
the  play,  which  is  divided,  like  many  of  Euripides',  between  two 
interests  more  or  less  loosely  connected.  In  the  present  play 

1  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  scene  being  laid  in  Thrace,  and  the  tomb  of 
Achilles  being  in  the  Troad,  the  so-called  unity  of  place  is  here  violated, 
as  often  elsewhere  in  Greek  tragedy. 

4  W.  905,  sq.  :  ffv  ufv,  3}  irarpls  'l\tds, 


CH.XVII.       IMITATIONS  OF  THE  HECUBA.  345 

the  nexus,  though  merely  accidental,  is  most  artfully  devised,  for 
the  fellow  slave,  who  goes  to  fetch  water  for  Polyxena's  funeral 
rites,  finds  the  body  of  Polydorus  tossing  on  the  shore.  This 
brings  out  the  fierce  element  in  the  heart-broken  mother.  She 
debates,  in  an  aside  not  common  on  the  Greek  stage,1  whether 
she  will  plead  her  case  of  vengeance  to  Agamemnon,  and  then 
she  does  so  with  great  art,  if  not  with  dignity.  Upon  his  acquie- 
scence, she  carries  out  her  plot  vigorously,  murders  Polymestor's 
children,  and  blinds  the  king  himself,  whose  wild  lamentations, 
with  Hecuba's  justification  by  Agamemnon,  and  the  Thracian's 
gloomy  prophecies,  conclude  the  play.  The  change  of  the 
heart-broken  Hecuba,  when  there  is  nothing  more  to  plead  for, 
from  despair  to  savage  fury,  is  finely  conceived,  and  agrees  with 
the  cruelty  which  Euripides  is  apt  to  attribute  to  old  women  in 
other  plays.  M.  Patin  compares  her  to  the  Margaret  in  Shak- 
speare's  Richard  I II.  Nevertheless  Hecuba's  lamentation  for 
her  children  is  conceived  in  quite  a  different  spirit  from  that  of 
the  barbarous  Thracian,  who  is  like  a  wild  beast  robbed  of  its 
whelps,  as  the  poet  more  than  once  reminds  us. 

It  may  fairly  be  doubted  whether  Sophocles'  Polyxena  was 
superior,  or  even  equal  to  Euripides'  heroine.  Ennius  selected 
the  Hecuba  for  a  translation,  which  was  admired  by  Cicero  and 
Horace.  Vergil  and  Ovid  recur  to  the  same  original  in  some  of 
their  finest  writing.  The  earliest  modern  versions  were  by  Eras- 
mus into  Latin,  Lazare  Bai'f  into  French,  and  Dolce  into  Italian. 
In  Hamlet  the  sorrows  of  Hecuba  are  alluded  to  as  proverbial, 
but  probably  in  reference  to  Seneca's  play,  which  will  be  con- 
sidered when  we  come  to  the  Troades.  Contaminations  of  the 
two  plays  were  common  in  France  all  through  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  M.  Patin  selects  for  special  censure 
those  of  Pradon  (1679),  and  Chateaubrun  (1755).  Porson  and 
G.  Hermann  have  spent  critical  labour  on  the  recension  and 
illustration  of  this  play  ;  the  scholia  upon  it  are  unusually  full. 
There  was  an  anonymous  English  version  called  '  Hecuba,  a 
tragedy/  catalogued  as  by  Rich.  West,  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ire- 

1  This  feature  recurs  in  the  famous  dialogue  between  Ion  and  Creusa 
(Ion,  424,  sq.),  and  elsewhere  in  that  play,  and  may  belong  to  the  latei 
style  of  Euripides. 

'5* 


346  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVIL 

land,  published  in  London  in  I726.1  Though  the  author,  who 
does  not  name  himself,  says  nothing  about  his  handling  of 
the  play,  and  speaks  of  it  as  a  translation,  he  has  made 
notable  changes ;  in  fact,  it  is  rather  a  French  than  a  Greek 
tragedy.  The  chorus  and  second  messenger's  speech  are 
omitted,  and  both  Polymestor  and  Hecuba  have  attendants, 
with  whom  they  converse.  The  plot  is  considerably  changed. 
I  have  never  seen  any  copy  of  this  rare  print,  except  that  in 
the  Bodleian  Library. 

§  209.  The  Raging  Heracles  ('HpaicX^e  juaivo/uvoc),  which 
is  among  the  plays  preserved  to  us  by  the  Florentine  MS. 
called  C,  is  one  of  the  most  precious  remains  of  Euripides,  and 
is  full  of  the  deepest  tragic  pathos.  It  seems  to  have  been 
brought  out  about  Ol.  90,  a  year  or  two  later  than  the  Hecuba, 
and  is  counted  one  of  his  best  plays  in  metre  and  diction  by 
the  critics.  Here,  again,  as  in  the  Hecuba,  two  apparently 
distinct  actions  are  brought  together  really  by  an  unity  of  in- 
terest, but  technically  by  a  new  prologue  of  Iris,  who  explains 
the  sequel  of  the  drama.  Nothing  can  be  more  suited  to 
excite  our  pity  and  terror  than  the  plot,  unconventional  as  it  is. 
The  prior  part  of  the  play,  which  is  constructed  very  like  that 
of  the  Andromache  and  the  Heracleida,  turns  upon  the  persecu- 
tion of  the  father,  wife,  and  children  of  the  absent  Heracles, 
by  Lycos,  tyrant  of  Thebes.  With  a  brutal  frankness  then  often 
appearing  in  Athenian  politics,  but  which  it  was  fashionable  to 
ascribe  to  tyrants,  he  insolently  insists  upon  their  death,  and 
proposes  to  drive  them  from  their  asylum  in  the  temple  of  Zeus 
by  surrounding  them  with  fire.  The  aged  Amphitryon  is  for 
excuses  and  delays,  in  the  hope  of  some  chance  relief,  and 
shows  far  more  desire  for  life  than  the  youthful  Megara,  who 
faces  the  prospect  of  death  with  that  boldness  and  simplicity 
often  found  in  Euripides'  heroines.  Her  character  is  drawn 
with  great  beauty,  as  is  also  the  attitude  of  the  chorus  of  old 
men,  who  fire  up  in  great  indignation  at  Lycos,  but  feel  unable 
to  resist  him.  When  the  woeful  procession  of  the  family  of 

1  It  was  brought  out  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  ;  but,  as  the  author  com- 
plains in  his  preface,  « a  rout  of  young  Vandals  in  the  galleries  intimidated 
th"  young  actresses,  disturbed  the  audience,  and  prevented  all  attention.' 


CH.  xvn.  THE  MAD  HERACLES.  347 

Heracles,  who  have  obtained  the  single  favour  of  attiring 
themselves  within  for  their  death,  reappears  on  the  stage,  and 
Megara  has  taken  sad  farewell  of  her  sons,  Heracles  suddenly 
appears ;  and  there  follows  a  splendid  scene  of  explanation, 
and  then  of  vengeance,  the  tyrant  being  slain  within,  in  the 
hearing  of  the  chorus,  just  as  in  the  parallel  scene  of  the  Aga- 
memnon. The  chorus  sing  a  hymn  of  thanksgiving ;  and  so 
this  part  of  the  drama  concludes. 

But  at  the  end  of  the  ode  they  break  out  into  horror  at  the 
sight  of  the  terrible  image  of  Lytta,  or  Madness,  whom  Iris  brings 
down  upon  the  palace,  and  explains  that  now  Heracles  is  no  lon- 
ger protected  by  Fate,  as  his  labours  are  over,  and  that  he  is 
therefore  open  to  Here's  vengeance.1  There  is  no  adequate  mo- 
tive alleged  for  this  hatred,  but  before  a  Greek  audience  it  was  so 
well  admitted  as  to  be  reasonably  assumed  by  the  poet.  The 
dreadful  catastrophe  follows,  and  takes  place  during  an  agitated 
and  broken  strain  of  the  chorus,  who  see  the  palace  shaking, 
and  hear  the  noise,  but  learn  the  details  from  a  messenger  in 
a  most  thrilling  speech.  The  devoted  wife  and  affectionate 
children,  whom  Heracles  has  just  saved  from  instant  death, 
have  been  massacred  by  the  hero  himself  in  his  frenzy;  and  he 
was  on  the  point  of  slaying  his  father,  when  Athena  appeared 
in  armour,  and  struck  him  down  into  a  swoon.  The  awaken- 
ing of  Heracles,  the  scene  of  explanation  between  him  and 
Amphitryon  which  follows,  the  despair  of  the  hero,  who  is 
scarcely  saved  from  suicide  by  the  sympathy  of  Theseus,  and  who 
at  last  departs  with  him  for  Athens — all  this  is  worked  out  in 
the  poet's  greatest  and  most  pathetic  style.  M.  Patin  specially 
notices  the  profound  pyschology  in  painting  the  method  of 
Heracles'  madness,  so  unlike  the  vague  rambling  often  put 
upon  the  stage,  and  compares  with  this  scene  the  parallel  one 
in  the  Orestes.  The  awakening  of  the  hero  may  be  intended 
to  rival  the  corresponding  scene  in  Sophocles'  A/ax,  to  which  the 
play  shows  many  striking  resemblances.  Indeed,  the  resolve 
of  Heracles  to  face  life,  after  his  pathetic  review  of  his  ever- 

1  The  student  should  notice  the  trochaic  tetrameters  here,  which  be 
come  more  frequent  in  Euripides'  late  plays,  so  affording  an  internal  test 
where  there  is  no  date.  . 


348  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

increasing  troubles,  is  far  nobler  and  more  profoundly  tragic 
than  Ajax'  resolve  to  fly  from  disgrace  by  a  voluntary  death. 

The  choral  odes  are  of  great,  though  not  of  equal,  merit,  es- 
pecially the  famous  complaint  against  age,  and  praise  of  youth,1 
so  like  Shakspeare's  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  ;  indeed,  the  whole 
play  is  well  worthy  of  greater  study  than  it  usually  receives. 
The  sceptical  outbreaks  against  Zeus  and  other  gods  are  here  par- 
ticularly bold,  but  are  tempered  by  the  poet's  splendid  utterance, 
that  all  their  crimes  are  but '  the  inventions  of  idle  singers.' 
The  praise  of  archery 2  seems  to  imply  a  feeling  that  light- 
armed  troops  were  coming  into  fashion,  and  that  their  usefulness 
was  now  recognised.  We  know  that  Plutarch  was  fond  of  this 
play,  and  Cicero  refers  to  the  ode  on  old  age  in  his  tract  De 
Senectute.  We  have  a  Hercules  Fur  ens  among  the  plays  of  Seneca, 
exhibiting  all  the  faithless  and  inartistic  copying  of  great  models 
which  we  find  in  the  other  Latin  tragedies  of  this  school.  It  has 
been  little  imitated  in  modern  times.  We  can  now  recommend 
the  admirable  translation  in  Mr.  Browning's  Aristophanes'  Apo- 
logy, as  giving  English  readers  a  thoroughly  faithful  idea  of  this 
splendid  play.  The  choral  odes  are,  moreover,  done  justice 
to,  and  translated  into  adequate  metre — in  this  an  improve- 
ment on  the  Alcestis,  to  which  I  have  already  referred. 

§  210.  The  Ion  seems  to  date  from  the  same  period.  The 
mention  of  the  obscure  piomontory  of  Rhion,  where  a  great 
Athenian  victory  was  gained  in  429,  and  the  stress  laid  on  the 
architectural  wonders  at  Delphi,  where  the  Athenians,  accord- 
ing to  Pausanias,  built  a  stoa  in  honour  of  the  victory,  seem  to 
fix  it  not  earlier  than  42 5.  But  the  prominence  of  monodies  in 
the  play  rather  points  to  a  more  recent  date,  when  Euripides  was 
about  to  pass  into  his  later  style.  The  play  is  no  tragedy,  but  a 
melodrama  with  an  ingenious  plot  full  of  surprises,  and  was  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  earliest  examples  of  the  kind  of  plan  adopted 
by  the  genteel  (or  new)  comedy  of  the  next  century.  Were 
there  not  great  religious  and  patriotic  interests  at  stake,  which 
make  the  play  serious  throughout,  it  might  more  fairly  be  called 
a  comedy  than  the  Alcestis  or  Orestes.  Even  the  most  violent 
detractors  of  Euripides  are  obliged  to  acknowledge  the  perfec- 

1  vv.  637,  sq.  2  vv.  190,  sq. 


CH.  xvii.  THE  ION.  349 

tion  of  this  play,  which  is  frequently  called  the  best  he  has  left 
us.  But  surely  excellence  of  plot  in  a  Greek  play  is  not  so 
high  a  quality  as  great  depth  of  passion  and  sentiment.  The 
/<?#,  however,  is  not  failing  in  these,  the  peculiar  province  of 
the  older  tragedy,  which  has  but  little  plot. 

Passing  by  Hermes'  prologue,  which  is  tedious  and  dull,  and 
is  in  my  opinion  altogether  spurious,  though  defended  by  good 
critics,  we  come  to  the  proper  opening  scene,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  of  the  Greek  stage,  in  which  Ion,  the  minister  of  Apollo's 
temple  at  Delphi,  performs  his  morning  duties  about  the  temple, 
and  drives  away  the  birds  which  are  hovering  round  the  holy 
precincts.1  There  is  no  character  in  all  Greek  tragedy  like  this 
Ion,  who  reminds  one  strongly  of  the  charming  boys  drawn  by 
Plato  in  such  dialogues  as  Charmides  and  Lysis.  In  purity  and 
freshness  he  has  been  compared  to  Giotto's  choristers,  and 
has  afforded  Racine  his  masterpiece  of  imitation  in  the  Joas 
of  the  Athalie.  But  I  would  liken  him  still  more  to  the  child 
Samuel,  whose  ministrations  are  painted  with  so  exquisite 
a  grace  in  the  Old  Testament.  For  Euripides  represents 
him  to  us  at  the  moment  when  his  childlike  innocence,  and 
absence  of  all  care,  are  to  be  rudely  dissipated  by  sudden  con- 
tact with  the  stormy  passions  and  sorrows  of  the  world.  The 
chorus  (of  Creusa's  retinue)  come  in  to  wonder  at  the  temple  and 
its  sculptures  ;  and  presently  Creusa  herself  enters  to  inquire  of 
the  god,  cloaking  her  case  under  the  guise  of  a  friend's  distress. 
Then  follows  a  scene  of  mutual  confidences  between  the 
unwitting  son  and  mother,  which  is  full  of  tragic  interest. 

I  will  not  pursue  further  the  various  steps  by  which  Ion  is 
declared  first  a  son  of  Xuthus,  then  hated  of  Creusa  as  a  step- 
child, then  her  attempt  to  murder  him,  and  at  last  her  recognition 
of  him  by  the  clothes  and  ornaments  with  which  she  had  exposed 
him.  The  agitated  monologue  of  Creusa,  when  confessing  her 
early  shame,  is  in  fine  contrast  to  the  innocent  freshness  of  the 

1  Tn  support  of  my  belief  in  the  spuriousness  of  the  prologue,  which, 
if  admitted,  makes  the  whole  splendid  dialogue  of  Ion  and  Creusa  idle 
repetition,  I  may  mention  that  the  Andromeda  and  Iphigenia  in  Au/is, 
both  without  prologues,  open  with  the  actor's  attention  fixed  on  the 
heavens,  as  in  the  monody  of  Ion. 


350  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvit 

monologue  of  Ion.  The  refusal  of  the  boy  to  follow  his  new 
father  to  Athens  is  in  thorough  keeping  with  his  character, 
but  expressed  with  such  political  insight  as  shows  the  poet 
plainly  speaking  through  the  character.  As  I  noted  two  pro- 
logues in  the  Heracles,  so  here  there  are  two  resolutions  of  the 
plot — as  it  were,  two  dii  ex  machina—^or\e  by  the  Delphic 
priestess,  the  other  by  Athena,  who  appears  at  the  end  to  re- 
move all  doubt.  With  very  good  taste  Apollo,  who  could 
hardly  appear  with  dignity,  and  Xuthus,  who  has  been  deceived, 
are  kept  out  of  sight.  But  in  spite  of  much  sceptical  question- 
ing and  complaint,  the  chorus  insists  at  the  end  that  the  gods' 
ways  are  not  our  ways,  and  that  their  seeming  injustices  are 
made  good  in  due  time.  This  and  the  glorifying  of  the  mythic 
ancestors  of  the  Athenians  are  the  lessons  conveyed  in  the  spirit 
of  the  play.  We  can  hardly  call  Creusa  one  of  Euripides' 
heroines,  for  she  is  altogether  a  victim  of  circumstances,  but 
still  she  powerfully  attracts  our  sympathy  in  spite  of  her  weak 
and  sudden  outburst  of  vindictiveness.  The  situation  of  a  dis- 
tracted mother  seeking  her  son's  death  unwittingly  was  again 
used  by  Euripides,  apparently  with  great  success,  in  the  Cres- 
phontes,  from  which  one  beautiful  choral  fragment  remains. 

The  chorus  in  this  play  is  more  than  elsewhere  the  accom- 
plice, and  even  the  guilty  accomplice,  of  the  chief  actress,  and 
its  other  action  is  merely  that  of  curious  observers,  if  we  ex- 
cept one  most  appropriate  ode,1  in  which  Euripides  draws  a  fairy 
picture  of  Pan  playing  to  the  goddesses,  who  dance  on  the  grassy 
top  of  the  Acropolis,  while  he  sits  in  his  grotto  beneath.  The 
grotto  is  there  still,2  and  so  are  the  ruined  temples,  but  no  ima- 
gination can  restore  the  grace  and  the  holiness  of  the  scene, 
now  a  wreck  of  stones  and  dust,  of  pollution  and  neglect. 

There  have  been  fewer  imitations  of  this  play  than  might  be 
expected.  It  was  translated  into  German  by  Wieland,  and  about 
the  same  time  (1803)  brought  on  the  stage  at  Weimar  by  A.  W. 

1  w.  452,  sq. 

2  This  play  decides  a  question  which  has  divided  archaeologists,  whether 
the  grottoes  of  Apollo  and  of  Pan,  on  the  northern  slope  of  the  Acropolis, 
were  identical  or  not.     A  comparison  of  vv.  502-4  with  v.  938  shows  that 
ihey  were  the  r.ame. 


CH.  xvii.  THE   TROADES.  351 

Schlegel,  but  unfortunately  in  a  very  vulgar  and  degraded  version, 
which  gave  Xuthus  a  principal  part  and  produced  Apollo  on 
the  stage,  and  which  so  displeased  the  Weimar  students,  that  old 
Goethe,  in  imitation  of  whose  Iphigenia  the  play  was  written,  and 
who  had  taken  great  pains  about  its  representation,  was  obliged 
to  stand  up  and  command  silence  in  the  pit.  There  was  an 
English  imitation  by  W.  Whitehead  in  1754.  The  Ion  of  Tal- 
fotird  has  only  the  general  conception  of  Ion  in  common  with 
the  Greek  play,  from  which  it  is  in  no  sense  imitated.  As  to  com- 
mentaries, after  Hermann's  recension  (i827)we  have  three  most 
scholarly  editions  by  C.  Badham  (1851,  1853,  and  1861),  of 
which  the  second  is  the  fullest  and  best,  but  in  all  the  critical 
powers  of  the  author  and  the  unmistakeable  influence  of  Cobet 
are  apparent. 

§  211.  The  Troades  came  out  in  415  B.C.  as  the  third  play 
with  the  Alexander  and  Pulamedes :  it  was  followed  by  the 
Sisyphus  as  the  satyrical  piece.  It  was  defeated  by  a  tetralogy 
of  Xenokles — the  (Edipus,  Lycaon,  Bacchce,  and  Athamas. 
Treating  of  the  same  subject  as  the  Hecuba,  it  somewhat  varies 
the  incidents  and  the  characters,  the  death  of  Astyanax  sup- 
planting that  of  Polyxena,  and  both  Cassandra  and  Andromache 
appearing,  There  is,  however,  far  less  plot  than  in  the  Hecuba, 
and  we  miss  even  the  satisfaction  of  revenge.  It  is  indeed  more 
absolutely  devoid  of  interest  than  any  play  of  Euripides,  for  it 
is  simply  '  a  voice  in  Ramah,  and  lamentation — Rachel  weeping 
for  her  children,  and  would  not  be  comforted,  because  they  were 
not.'  It  is  the  prophet's  roll '  which  was  written  within  and  with- 
out with  mourning  and  lamentation  and  woe.'  Nevertheless  the 
wild  and  poetic  fervour  of  Cassandra  reminds  us  of  the  great 
passage  in  the  Agamemnon.  The  litigious  scene  in  which  Hecuba 
and  Helen  argue  before  Menelaus,  and  the  constant  appear- 
ances of  Talthybius,  are  not  agreeable  diversions.  Above  all,  the 
ruthless  murder  of  the  infant  Astyanax  is  too  brutal  to  be  fairly 
tolerable  in  any  tragedy.  As  regards  the  loose  connection  of 
the  scenes,  Patin  very  properly1  shows  how,  in  what  maybe 
called  Euripides'  episodic  pieces,  he  reverts  to  the  trilogistic  idea 
of  ^Eschylus,  but  crowds  together  the  loosely  connected  plays 

1  '•  333- 


352  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

of  the  trilogy  into  the  loosely  connected  scenes  of  a  single  play. 
This  sort  of  tragedy,  which  is  in  effect  very  like  the  old  lyrical 
pieces,  such  as  the  Supplices  and  Persa,  was  put  on  the  stage 
in  contrast  to  the  tragedies  of  intrigue,  the  one  being  in- 
tended to  affect  the  heart,  the  other  to  excite  the  imagination  of 
the  spectator.  The  main  sign  of  Euripides'  later  style  is  the 
prevalence  of  monodies,  in  which  he  excels,  in  spite  of  all 
Aristophanes'  ridicule,  and  which  are  the  most  splendid  features 
in  both  the  Ion  and  in  this  play. 

The  many  imitations  have  so  naturally  contaminated  the 
Troades  with  the  Hecuba,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  treat  them  sepa- 
rately. Several  passages  in  Vergil's  ^Eneid,  such  as  the  appeal 
of  Juno  to  ^Eolus,  and  the  awful  picture  of  the  fall  of  Troy, 
are  plainly  adopted  from  the  Troades.  The  Troades  of  Seneca 
is  considered  by  good  critics  as  the  finest  of  that  collection  of 
Latin  plays,  and,  in  spite  of  its  faults  of  tinsel,  of  false  rhetoric, 
and  of  overdone  sentiment,  has  real  dramatic  merit.  The 
deaths  of  Polyxena  and  of  Astyanax  are  both  wrought  in,  thus 
copying  features  from  each  of  Euripides'  tragedies.  But  there  is 
a  very  splendid  tragic  scene  added  on  the  attempts  of  Andro- 
mache to  deceive  Ulysses,  and  hide  her  child.  Her  violent 
fury  and  her  threats  are,  however,  foreign  to  the  conception 
of  both  Homer,  Vergil,  and  Euripides.  Thus  again,  Seneca's 
Talthybius  is  led  into  sceptical  doubts  at  the  sight  of  the 
Trojan  misfortunes,  and  a  whole  chorus  is  devoted  to  the 
denial  of  any  future  life — a  grave  and  inartistic  anachronism. 
There  is  a  French  Troades  by  Gamier  (1578),  built  as  much 
on  Seneca  as  on  Euripides,  one  by  Sallebray  (1640),  and 
numerous  obscure  plays  towards  the  end  of  the  last  century.  I 
cannot  but  think  that  the  epics  of  Homer  and  Vergil  have  been 
the  real  reason  of  the  great  popularity  of  these  subjects  upon 
the  stage.  I  do  not  suppose  that  either  of  Euripides'  plays 
would  have  sufficed  to  lead  the  fashion. 

§  2 1 2.  The  Helena,  which  comes  to  us,  like  some  other  plays, 
through  the  Florentine  codex  C  alone,  and  in  a  very  corrupt 
and  much  corrected  state,  has  been  placed  very  low  among  the 
plays  of  Euripides.  It  seems  to  have  come  out  with  the 
Andromeda,  in  412  B.C.  (Ol.  91,  4),  and  was  certainly  ridiculed 


CH.  xvir.  THE  HELENA.  353 

with  it  by  Aristophanes  in  his  Thesmophoriazusce,  not  without 
reason.  The  play  is  a  very  curious  one,  and  to  be  placed  on  a 
par  with  the  Electro,  (which  distinctly J  alludes  to  it)  on  account 
of  its  very  free  handling  of  the  celebrated  legend  of  the  rape 
of  Helen.  The  version  which  kept  the  heroine  in  Egypt,  and 
denied  that  she  had  ever  been  in  Troy,  was  first  given  by  Stesi- 
chorus,  and  was  repeated  by  the  Egyptian  priests  to  Herodotus, 
whose  history  did  not  appear  till  about  this  time.  Stesichorus, 
moreover,  invented  or  found  the  notion  of  a  phantom  Helen 
at  Troy.  The  palinode  of  Stesichorus  (cf.  above,  p.  203)  was  very 
celebrated,  and  is  repeatedly  alluded  to  by  Plato.  Neverthe- 
less, it  seems  very  bold  to  transfer  to  the  stage  the  fancy  of  a 
few  literary  men,  or  in  any  case  to  contradict  the  greatest  and 
the  best  established  of  all  the  popular  myths.  It  is  evident 
that  this  innovation  did  not  prosper.  Isocrates,  in  his  Enco- 
mium, takes  no  notice  of  it,  and  no  modern  has  attempted  to 
reproduce  it  except  the  German  Wieland.  Apart  from  this 
novelty,  there  is  throughout  a  friendly  and  even  respectful  hand- 
ling of  Sparta  and  the  Spartans,  which  contradicts  the  general 
tone  of  the  poet's  mind,  and  stands,  I  think,  alone  among 
his  extant  plays.  Again,  though  there  is  much  scepticism  ex- 
pressed, especially  of  prophecies,  as  was  his  wont  at  this  period, 
the  noblest  character  is  a  prophetess,  who  possesses  an  unerring 
knowledge  of  the  future.  Menelaus,  too,  who  is  elsewhere  a 
cowardly  and  mean  bully,  is  here  a  ragged  and  distressed,  but 
yet  bold  and  adventurous  hero,  with  no  trace  of  his  usual  stage 
attributes.  And,  lastly, .  Helen  is  a  faithful  and  persecuted 
wife,  though  in  the  Troades,  which  shortly  preceded,  and  the 
Orestes,  which  followed,  this  play,  she  appears  in  the  most  odious 
colours,  and  in  accordance  with  the  received  myth.  All  these 
anomalies  make  the  Helena  a  problem  hard  to  understand,  and 
still  harder  when  we  compare  it  with  the  masterly  Iphigenia  in 
Tauris,  which  is  laid  on  exactly  the  same  plan,  and  is  yet  so 
infinitely  greater,  and  better  executed.  The  choral  odes  are 
quite  in  the  poet's  later  style,  full  of  those  repetitions  of  words 
which  Aristophanes  derides.2  The  ode  on  the  sorrows  of 

1  v.  1271. 

2  Mr.  Browning  has  not  failed  to  reproduce  this  Euripidean  feature  with 


354  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

Demeter    is    absolutely    irrelevant,   though    gracefully   com- 
posed. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  at  least  one  scene,  that  of  the  recog- 
nition of  Menelaus  and  the  real  Helen,  witnessed  by  an  old  and 
faithful  servant,  which  is  of  the  highest  merit  in  beauty  and 
pathos,  and  we  wonder  how  the  poet  should  have  chosen 
that  mythical  couple,  whose  conjugal  relations  in  all  his  other 
tragedies  were  most  painful,  to  exemplify  the  purest  and  most 
enduring  domestic  affection.  This  recognition  scene  should 
take  its  place  in  Greek  literature  with  the  matchless  scene  in 
the  Odyssey,  for  the  love  of  husband  and  wife  was  rarely 
idealised  by  the  Greeks,  and  these  grand  exceptions  are  worthy 
of  especial  note.  I  suppose  that  by  this  bold  contradiction  not 
only  of  the  current  view  of  Helen,  but  of  his  own  treatment  of 
her  and  Menelaus  in  other  plays,  the  poet  meant  to  teach  that 
the  myths  were  only  convenient  vehicles  for  depicting  human 
character  and  passion,  and  had  no  other  value.  Since  Her- 
mann's recension,  the  most  important  special  edition  is  that  of 
Badham,1  who  has  done  much  for  the  text. 

§  213.  We  may  choose  next  in  order  the  Iphigenia  among 
the  Tauri,  a  play  of  unknown  date,  but  evidently  a  late  produc- 
tion of  the  poet's,  to  judge  from  the  metres,  the  prevalence  of 
monodies,  and  the  irrelevant  choruses.  It  is  very  like  in  plot  to 
the  Helena.  In  fact,  the  main  elements  are  the  same  in  both 
plays.  Iphigenia,  like  Helen,  is  carried  off  by  a  special  interpo- 
sition of  the  gods  to  a  barbarous  land,  where  she  is  held  in 
honour,  but  pines  to  return  to  her  home.  Both  plays  turn  on  the 
mutual  recognition  of  the  heroines  and  their  deliverers,  the  hus- 
band and  the  brother,  and  then  upon  the  dangers  of  the  escape, 
the  deceiving  of  the  barbarian  king  in  attaining  it,  and  the  supe- 
rior seamanship  and  courage  of  the  Greek  sailors.  But  in  this 
second  play,  Euripides  has  not  contradicted  any  received  myth, 
or  distorted  any  well-known  mythical  type,  and  has,  moreover, 
woven  in  the  mutual  friendship  of  Orestes  and  Pylades,  and 

great  art  and  admirable  effect  in  his  version  of  the  Heracles.     We  might 
adduce  examples  from  a  totally  different  school,  the  lyrics  of  Uhland  and 
Plathen,  and  how  beautiful  they  are  ! 
1  Along  with  the  Iph.  Taur.  in  1851. 


CH.  xvii.  IPHIGENIA   IN  TAURIS.  355 

made  Iphigenia  a  heroine  not  only  of  situation,  but  of  character. 
In  both  plays,  though  he  has  not  scrupled  to  make  barbarians 
talk  good  Greek,  he  has  avoided  the  objections  to  a  barbarian 
chorus,  by  giving  the  heroine  a  following  of  Greek  attendants, 
who  are  naturally  her  accomplices.  They  even  interfere  actively 
in  the  Helena  by  literally  laying  hold  of  the  enraged  king,  and 
striving  to  turn  away  his  vengeance  from  his  priestess  sister; 
in  the  Iphigenia,  by  the  more  questionable  expedient  (unique, 
I  think,  in  the  extant  tragedies)  of  telling  the  anxious  mes- 
senger a  deliberate  falsehood  to  delay  the  king's  knowledge 
of  the  prisoners'  and  the  priestess'  escape.1 

The  prologue,  spoken  by  Iphigenia  herself,  explains  how  she 
had  been  snatched  from  under  the  knife  of  Calchas  and  carried 
by  Artemis  to  the  Tauric  Chersonese,  where,  as  her  priestess, 
she  was  obliged  to  prepare  for  sacrifice  (Euripides  has  here 
artistically  softened  the  fierce  legend)  such  luckless  strangers  as 
were  cast  upon  the  coast.  Doubtless  early  Greek  discoverers 
and  adventurous  merchantmen  often  met  this  fate  at  the  hands 
of  the  wild  Scythians,  and  it  addel  to  the  excitement  which 
enveloped  the  commerce  of  the  early  Greeks — '  cette  race,' 
says  Dumas,  'qui  a  fait  du  commerce  une  poesie.'  The 
first  ode  of  the  chorus2  embodies  this  feeling  with  great  spirit. 
But  Iphigenia  has  been  agitated  by  a  dream,  which  portends 
to  her  the  death  of  Orestes,  upon  whom  she  had  long  fixed 
her  vague  and  undefined  hopes  of  restoration  to  her  home. 
The  dream  is  admirably  conceived,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
absolute  certainty  which  it  breeds  in  her  mind,  and  her  conse- 
quent sacrifice  of  libations,  is  somewhat  of  a  flaw  in  the  action 
of  the  play.  At  no  epoch  have  men  been  forthwith  persuaded 
by  mere  dreams  without  any  other  evidence.  In  the  next  scene 
Orestes  and  Pylades  appear,  who  have  been  directed  by  Apollo, 
in  spite  of  the  acquittal  before  the  Areopagus,  to  complete  the 
recovery  of  Orestes  by  carrying  off  the  image  of  the  Tauric 
goddess  to  Attica — a  detail  which  gives  the  story  a  local  interest  to 

'  '  It  is  remarkable  that  Iphigenia   addresses   them  individually    (vy. 
1067,  sq.) — a  device  not  elsewhere  used  in  Greek  tragedy,  so  far  as  I  can 
remember.     Cf.  Patin,  iv,  109,  on  the  point. 
2  vv.  392,  sq. 


356  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH,  xvn. 

the  audience.  The  long  responsive  monodies  of  Iphigenia  and 
the  chorus  over  their  funeral  libations  are  interrupted  by  the 
fine  narrative  of  a  shepherd,  who  tells  of  the  discovery  of  the 
friends,  the  madness  of  Orestes,  the  devotion  of  Pylades,  and 
the  difficult  capture  of  the  heroic  young  men.  The  soliloquy  of 
Iphigenia  when  she  hears  the  news  is  peculiarly  beautiful.1 
After  the  above-mentioned  most  appropriate  chorus,  they  are 
led  in  bound,  and  there  ensues  between  Iphigenia  and  Orestes 
the  finest  dialogue  left  us  by  any  Greek  tragic  poet.  At  its  close 
she  proposes  to  save  Orestes  and  send  him  with  a  letter  to 
Argos,  but  she  is  stayed  by  his  devotion,  for  he  will  not  escape 
at  the  cost  of  his  friend's  life.  The  contest  between  Orestes  and 
Pylades,  as  to  which  should  sacrifice  himself  for  the  other,  has 
afforded  all  the  imitators  great  scope  for  a  dramatic  scene,  but 
was  evidently  not  prominent  to  Euripides,  who  treats  it  with 
some  reserve  and  coldness.  The  recognition  by  means  of  the 
letter  of  which  Iphigenia  tells  the  contents  has  been  praised  ever 
since  Aristotle,  and  the  ensuing  scene  may  be  compared  with 
the  rejoicings  of  brother  and  sister  in  Sophocles'  Electra,  which 
it  closely  resembles.  The  devices  to  overreach  king  Thoas,  the 
attempted  flight  and  danger  of  the  three  friends,  and  the  inter- 
position of  Athene  conclude  a  play  second  to  none  of  Euripides' 
in  depth  of  feeling  and  ingenuity  of  construction.  The  last  ode 
on  the  establishment  of  Apollo's  worship  at  Delphi  is  perfectly 
irrelevant,  but  very  Pindaric  in  style  and  feeling,  and  is,  like 
all  the  odes  of  the  play,  full  of  lyric  beauty. 

Aristotle  mentions  a  play  on  the  same  subject  by  Polyidos, 
in  which  Orestes  was  actually  led  to  the  altar,  and  recognised 
by  his  passionate  comparison  of  his  own  and  his  sister's  fate. 

1   W   344—53  •  &  Kaptila  rd\aiva,  trpiv  /J.ev  es  £evovs 

aei, 


avSpas  r)vti('  e's  x*Pas  t-afiois. 
vvv  8'  e£  oveipuv  dlffiv  i]ypica/j.fda, 
SOKOV<T'  'Opeffrr)v  /tij/ce'fl'  9i\iov  /3\eirftv, 
Svffvovv  /j.f  Ktytffff,  (flrivfs  iroQ'  T^icere. 
Kal  TOUT'  Jtp'  ?iv  a\r)0fs,  $ff66fi.'i]v,  <pi\cn, 
ol  SvffTvxt'ts  yap  Tolaiv  ei>Tt;x€orT*P0's 
avrol  KoXws  irpd£avTfs  oil  Qpovovffiv  e5. 


CH.  xvii.  MODERN  IPHIGENIAS.  357 

Sophocles  had  composed  an  Aletes,  and  an  Erigone,  both  based 
on  the  adventures  of  the  characters  upon  their  return  to  Greece. 
Euripides  was  imitated  perhaps  by  Ennius,  certainly  by  Pacuvius 
in  his  famous  Dulorestes,  in  which,  according  to  Cicero,  the 
mutual  contest  of  the  friends  to  encounter  death  for  each  other 
excited  storms  of  applause.  One  of  the  earliest  Italian  dra- 
matists, Ruccellai,  composed  a  Tauric  Iphigenia  about  1520. 
There  was  another  by  Martello,  about  two  centuries  later.  The 
French  dramatists  insisted,  as  usual,  on  improving  on  Euripides, 
especially  by  introducing  a  love  affair.  The  Scythian  king  rilled 
he  gap,  and  appeared  on  the  stage,  as  the  French  say,  en 
soupirant.  Even  in  Racine's  sketch,  which  is  preserved,  and 
which  gives  a  short  abstract  of  the  matter  for  the  scenes  of  a 
first  act,  the  king's  son  is  enamoured  of  the  heroine,  and  would 
evidently  have  been  made  the  means  of  saving  Orestes  and 
Pylades  from  their  impending  death.  This  element  was  ex- 
aggerated, and  the  splendours  of  a  French  court  and  of  foreign 
diplomacy  added  to  the  Oreste  of  Le  Clerc  and  Boyer,  and  to 
the  Oreste  el  Pylade  of  Lagrange-Chancel,  the  supposed  suc- 
cessor of  Racine.  Guimond  de  la  Touch e's  play  (1757)  is  said 
to  be  more  simple,  and  pleased  everybody  at  the  time  except — 
Voltaire,  Grimm,  and  Diderot !  But  with  the  aid  of  Gluck's 
music,  the  opera  of  1778  laid  permanent  hold  of  public  taste.1 
There  yet  remains  the  very  famous  Iphigenia  of  Goethe  for 
our  consideration.  This  excellent  play  has  been  extolled  far 
beyond  its  merits  by  the  contemporaries  of  its  great  author,  but 
is  now  generally  allowed,  even  in  Germany,  to  be  a  somewhat 
unfortunate  mixture  of  Greek  scenery  and  characters  with 
modern  romantic  sentiment.  It  therefore  gives  no  idea  what- 
ever of  a  Greek  play,  and  of  this  its  unwary  reader  should  be 
carefully  reminded.  Apart  from  the  absence  of  chorus,  and  the 
introduction  of  a  sort  of  confidant  of  the  king,  Arkas,  who  does 
nothing  but  give  stupid  and  unheeded  advice,  the  character  of 
Thoas  is  drawn  as  no  barbarian  king  should  have  been  drawn — 
a  leading  character,  and  so  noble  that  Iphigenia  cannot  bring 
herself  to  deceive  him,  a  scruple  which  an  Athenian  audience 

1  Gluck  brought  out  both  the  Iph.  Aul.  and  Taur.     Cf.  Patin,  iii.  p.  6, 
and  iv.  p.  127,  who  gives  1774  and  1778  as  the  years  of  their  appearance. 


358  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

would  have  derided.  Equally  would  they  have  derided  Orestes' 
proposal,  of  which  Thoas  approves,  to  prove  his  identity  by 
single  combat,  and  still  more  the  argument  which  Iphigenia 
prefers  to  all  outward  marks — the  strong  yearning  of  her  heart 
to  the  stranger.  The  whole  diction  and  tone  of  the  play  is, 
moreover,  full  of  idealistic  dreaming,  and  conscious  analysis 
of  motive,  which  the  Greeks,  who  painted  the  results  more 
accurately,  never  paraded  upon  the  stage.  The  celebrity  of  this 
so-called  imitation  will  afford  an  excuse  for  so  much  criticism. 

§  214.  The  Electro,  must  have  appeared  during  the  closing 
years  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  and  was  fresh  in  men's  memory 
when,  as  Plutarch  tells  us,1  during  the  deliberations  about  the 
fate  of  conquered  Athens,  a  Phocian  actor  sung  the  opening 
monody  of  Electra,  and  moved  all  to  pity  by  the  picture  of 
a  whilome  princess  reduced  to  rags  and  to  misery.  The 
incident  is  said  to  have  had  a  distinct  influence  in  saving  the 
city  from  destruction.  This  testimony  to  the  merit  of  at 
least  one  scene  in  the  play  is  hardly  admitted  by  the  majority 
of  critics,  who  have  made  the  Electra  a  source  of  perpetual 
censure  and  perpetual  amusement,  and  have  generally  set  it 
down  as  the  weakest  extant  production  of  Euripides,  and  a 
wretched  attempt  to  treat  with  originality  a  subject  exhausted 
by  his  greater  predecessors.  I  need  not  go  into  detail  as  regards 
these  objections,  which  have  been  set  forth  with  great  assurance 
and  with  an  air  of  high  superiority  by  A.  W.  Schlegel,  who  never- 
theless, as  I  have  already  stated  (above,  p.  351),  himself  sig- 
nally failed  in  his  endeavours  to  improve  upon  the  Ion  of  the 
despised  Euripides. 

Turning  to  the  play  itself,  the  first  remark  to  be  made 
is  that  it  was  clearly  meant  as  a  critique  on  certain  defects 
in  the  earlier  Electras.  Apart  from  its  intention  as  a  drama,  it 
is  a  feuilleton  spirituel,  as  M.  Patin  calls  it,  and  so  far  takes 
its  place  with  the  literary  criticism  common  in  the  Middle 
Comedy.  Euripides  attacks2  the  three  various  signs  of  re- 
cognition which  satisfied  the  simpler  Electra  of  ^Eschylus, 
viz.  a  likeness  of  colour  and  texture  in  the  hair,  an  identity  in 
the  size  of  the  foot,  shown  by  deep  footprints,  and  the  design 

1  Lys.  c.  i$.  2  w.  524,  sq. 


CH.  XVII.  THE  ELECTRA.  359 

of  a  garment  which  must  have  been  long  since  worn  out.  The 
new  Electra  ridicules  all  these  tokens,  and  passing  by  without 
comment  the  family  ring  used  by  Sophocles,  is  content  with  a 
scar  on  the  forehead  of  the  unknown  brother,  which  has  not 
escaped  similar  criticism,  but  which,  we  must  remind  the 
triumphant  objectors,  is  not  discovered  by  the  young  princess, 
but  by  an  aged  servitor,  who  had  known  Orestes  as  a  child,  and 
was  merely  directed  by  this  mark  to  tax  his  memory  of  the  face. 
As  soon  as  the  recognition  is  completed,  the  poet  plainly  criti- 
cises the  long  and  dramatically  absurd  scene  of  Electra's  re- 
joicing in  Sophocles,  by  cutting  short  these  ebullitions  and 
proceeding  at  once  to  the  plot  against  the  royal  murderers. 
He  implies  a  censure  of  both  his  predecessors'  economy  by  set- 
ting aside  as  impossible  and  hopeless  what  they  had  admitted 
without  hesitation — an  attack  on  the  reigning  tyrants  in  their 
own  palace — and  makes  the  success  of  the  attempt  turn  on  the 
absence  of  both  from  their  fortress  and  their  guards.  This 
alters  the  plan  of  his  play  ;  he  represents  ^Egisthus  as  slain  at 
a  sacrifice  to  which  he  had  invited  the  strangers,  and  Clytem- 
nestra  as  enticed  to  visit  Electra's  peasant  home  under  pretence 
of  a  family  sacrifice.  But  these  are  only  external  points. 

The  really  important  ethical  criticism  of  his  predecessors  is 
his  approval  of  ^Eschylus,  and  condemnation  of  Sophocles,  in 
painting  the  hesitation  of  Orestes  when  he  sees  his  mother  ap- 
proaching, and  the  outburst  of  dread  and  of  remorse  in  both 
brother  and  sister  when  the  deed  is  done — a  pointed  contrast  to 
the  happy  piety  of  the  pair  in  Sophocles  (above,  p.  289),  where 
the  voice  of  Apollo's  oracle  sets  at  rest  every  scruple  of  filial  duty 
or  of  natural  conscience.  In  other  respects  Euripides'  Electra 
is  nearer  to  the  conception  of  Sophocles  :  she  is  harder  and 
fiercer  than  her  brother,  and  is  brought  in  acting  at  the  matri- 
cide, instead  of  being  more  delicately  removed  from  the  action, 
as  in  the  play  of  vEschylus.  But  he  seems  to  me  to  have  in- 
tended it  as  a  further,  and  a  sound,  criticism  on  the  improba- 
bilities of  the  earlier  stage,  when  he  represents  ^tgisthus 
as  unable  to  bear  with  this  sharp-tongued  and  furious  lire 
concileable  in  his  palace,  and  the  mother  as  a  sort  of  weak 
defender  of  her  child,  submitting  to  the  ignoble  compromise 


360  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

of  marrying  her  to  a  peasant.  He  has  moreover  attributed 
a  certain  gentle  contrition  to  Clytemnestra,1  which  makes  her 
an  amiable  contrast  to  Electra,  and  excites  some  sympathy 
in  spite  of  her  crimes,  so  that  we  come  to  look  upon  her  as  we 
do  upon  the  queen  in  Hamlet,  erring  and  even  defending  her 
errors  with  criminal  sophistry,  but  not  reprobate.  This  point 
gives  peculiar  bitterness  to  the  remorse  of  the  murderers,  at 
least  in  the  spectator's  mind. 

If  we  continue  our  study  of  the  play,  and  observe  its 
general  temper,  it  strikes  us  as  of  all  the  extant  tragedies 
the  most  openly  democratic  in  tone.  In  many  other  of  his 
plays,  Euripides  has  represented  trusty  slaves  of  noble  cha- 
racter and  self-devotion,  and  reiterated  the  sentiment  that  sla- 
very is  an  accident,  and  that  there  is  nobility  in  men  of  low 
degree.  But  these  instances  are  almost  all  in  the  retinue  of 
princes.  In  the  present  play  Euripides  not  only  puts  peasants 
on  the  tragic  stage,  but  makes  them  the  noblest  and  most 
intelligent  of  his  characters.  Electra's  husband  is  the  moral 
hero  of  the  play,  as  Orestes  testifies  in  a  remarkable  aside ; 2 
the  aged  farmer  from  the  Spartan  frontier  is  the  moving  spirit 
in  the  devising  of  the  plot  Not  only  are  these  excellent 
people  in  every  respect  equal  to  their  tragic  parts,  but  the 
obscurity  of  their  life  secures  them  from  the  misfortunes  and 
miseries  to  which  great  houses  are  almost  hereditarily  exposed. 
Orestes  and  Electra  are  the  playthings  of  oracles  and  family 
curses,  and  of  an  ambitious  position,  which  forces  them  into 
exile  and  into  crime.  When  the  catastrophe  is  over,  the  poor 
people  who  have  helped  them  return  to  their  simple  and  un- 
eventful life,  only  altered  by  the  gratitude  of  their  princes.  If 
Euripides  was  indeed  ever  influenced  by  what  the  Germans  call 
the  Ochlocracy,  it  was  in  this  drama,  where  he  vindicates  the 
dignity  of  the  lower  classes,  and  exhibits  the  dangers  and  respon- 
sibilities of  greatness.  The  grace  and  nature  of  the  bucolic 
scenes  at  the  opening  show  a  remarkable  idyllic  power  in  the 
poet,  unlike  anything  we  possess  before  Theocritus,  and  we  may 
well  wonder  at  the  curious  want  of  taste  in  the  critics  who 
have  ridiculed  this  part  of  the  play — 

1  w.  1102-10,  2  w.  367,  sq. 


CH.  XVII.  THE  ORESTES.  361 

Triumphant  play,  wherein  our  poet  first 
Dared  bring  the  grandeur  of  the  Tragic  Two 
Down  to  the  level  of  our  common  life, 
Close  to  the  beating  of  our  common  heart.1 

The  choral  odes  are  slight  and  unimportant ;  the  fawning  flat- 
tery shown  to  Clytemnestra,  whose  danger  they  know,  and 
have  prepared,  exhibits  a  degradation  very  unusual  in  any 
but  the  later  plays  of  Sophocles  or  Euripides,  when  the  chorus 
was  waning  rapidly  in  importance.  I  cannot  but  think  that 
this  play  was  rather  intended  for  a  reading  public  than  for  the 
stage.  Hence,  though  it  never  made  its  mark  as  a  tragedy,  it  is 
among  the  most  characteristic  and  instructive  pieces  left  us  in 
early  criticism. 

§  215.  The  Orestes,  brought  out  in  409  B.C.  (in  the  archon- 
ship  of  Diokles,  Ol.  92,  4),  is  agreed  on  all  hands  to  exhibit 
most  strongly  both  the  merits  and  defects  of  the  author.  In  the 
looseness  and  carelessness  of  the  metre,  in  the  crowding  of  in- 
cidents at  the  end  of  the  play,  in  the  low  tone  of  its  morality — 
they  are  all  base,  says  the  scholiast,  except  Pylades,  and  yet  even 
he  advises  a  cold-blooded  murder  for  revenge's  sake — there  is  no 
play  of  Euripides  so  disagreeable.  On  the  other  hand,  for  dra- 
matic effect,  as  the  same  scholiast  observes,  there  is  none  more 
striking  ;  but  this  applies  only  to  the  opening  scenes.  The  sub- 
ject is  the  same  as  that  of  -^Eschylus'  Eumenides,  but  instead  of 
visible  Furies  in  visible  pursuit,  the  consequences  of  remorse, 
the  horrors  of  a  distraught  imagination,  and  the  suffering  of 
disease,  are  put  upon  the  stage,  and  the  purely  human  affection 
of  a  sister  seeks  to  relieve  the  woes  which  the  gods  can  hardly 
heal  in  ^Eschylus.  Yet  all  through  the  play  there  are  satiri- 
cal and  even  comic  elements,  which  have  led  to  the  reasonable 
conjecture  that  it  was  meant,  like  the  Alcestis,  to  supply  the 
place  of  a  satyric  drama. 

Thus,  after  Electra's  prologue,  of  which  Socrates  is  said 
to  have  peculiarly  admired  the  first  three  lines,  Helen,  who 
has  ust  arrived  from  sea,  proposes  to  her  to  bring  fune- 
ral offerings  to  the  tomb  of  Clytemnestra,  under  pretence 
of  her  own  unpopularity  and  Hermione's  youth.  This  ab- 

1  R.  Browning,  Aristoph.  Apol.  p.  357. 
VOL.  I. — 16 


362  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

surdly  tactless  and  evidently  selfish  request  is  politely  but 
venomously  declined  by  Electra,  who  comments  upon  the 
niggard  offering  of  Helen's  hair.1  The  arrival  of  the  chorus, 
whom  Electra  strives  with  intense  anxiety  to  quiet,  for 
fear  of  disturbing  Orestes,  leads  to  his  awakening,  and  to 
the  famous  scene,  which  has  excited  the  wonder  of  all 
its  readers,  and  which  I  will  not  profane  by  a  dry  abridg- 
ment.2 The  arrival  of  Menelaus  leads  to  a  dialogue  which 
shows  him  both  cowardly  and  selfish  ;  but  in  the  speech  of  old 
Tyndareus,  who  comes  in  to  urge  the  death  of  Orestes,  and  to 
dissuade  Menelaus  from  interfering,  there  are  most  wise  and 
•politic  reflections  on  the  majesty  of  the  lav/,  and  the  necessity 
of  submitting  men's  passions  to  its  calm  decrees.  Granting, 
he  argues,  that  Clytemnestra  did  murder  his  father — a  most 
shocking  crime,  which  he  will  not  palliate — Orestes  should 
have  brought  an  action  against  her,  and  ejected  her  for- 
mally from  his  palace,3  but  not  have  propagated  bloody 
violence  from  generation  to  generation.4  This  very  en- 
lightened argument,  one  which  was  familiar  to  the  Athenian 
democracy  of  the  day,  but  has  not  since  asserted  itself  until 
now,  and  even  now  only  partially  through  Europe,  is  surely 
the  most  advanced  and  modern  feature  in  the  literature  of  the 
Periclean  age.  The  character  of  Pylades,  who  supports 
the  tottering  Orestes  to  the  public  assembly,  where  his  fate 
is  to  be  decided,  their  touching  affection,  and  the  sarcas- 
tic description  of  the  meeting  and  of  the  speakers,  in  which 
critics  have  found  portraits  of  the  demagogue  Cleophon  and  of 

1  w.  126-31 :  5  (piiffts,  tv  avOp&Troifftv  us  n4y'  «?  KO.KOV, 

ffWT'flpdv  T6  TOtS  /COAWS  KfKTr)fJ.fVOlS. 

efSere  irap'  atcpas  us  airedpifffv  rpi'xas, 
ffd>£ovffa  KaAAos  ;  tffri  5'  T\  irciAai  yvvf]. 
6foi  ffe  fjuffiiffeiav,  &s  /*'  aw(i>\effas 
Kal  T<Ji/8e  Traffdv  6'  'EAAdS'.  &  rciAeuj''  eyd. 

2  vv.  211-313.  3  vv.  496-502. 

4  523-25  :         ap.vv£>  8',  ocrocirep  5vvar6s  tlfjn,  T£  vo/j.™, 
rb  OripiiaSfs  rovro  Kal  fi.taiQoi'ov 
iravtav,  f>  Kal  yriv  Kal  ir6\tis  u\\vtr  ctfi 


CH.  XVII.  THE  ORESTES.  363 

Socrates ! — all  this  is  still  on  a  high  level,  and  worthy  of  its 
great  author.  But  when  Orestes  and  Electra  turn,  at  the 
advice  of  Pylades,  from  pathetic  laments  to  revenge,  and 
invoke  the  aid  of  Agamemnon  to  murder  Helen  and  Electra, 
our  sympathies  are  estranged,  and  no  interest  remains  except 
in  the  very  comic  appearance  of  the  Phrygian  slave,  and  his 
remarkable  monody.  The  reconciliation  and  betrothal  of 
the  deadly  enemies  at  the  end  is  plainly  a  parody  on  such 
denouements.  There  are,  as  usual,  many  sceptical  allusions 
throughout  the  play,  and  one  remarkable  assertion  of  physical 
philosophy.2 

Though  the  quotations  and  indirect  imitations  of  the 
Orestes,  as  well  as  translations  from  the  great  scene,  have 
been  frequent  in  all  ages,  the  defects  of  the  whole  as  a  play  have 
naturally  prevented  any  direct  reproduction  on  the  modern 
stage.  The  famous  lines  upon  the  blessed  comfort  of  sleep 
to  the  anxious  and  the  distressed,  may  be  paralleled  in  many 
conscious  imitations,  yet  in  none  of  them  more  closely  than 
In  two  passages  of  Shakspeare. 

The  ravings  of  Orestes  have  suggested  to  Goethe  his  wild 
wanderings  at  the  moment  when  his  sister  declares  herself; 
but  anyone  who  will  compare  the  elaborate  and  far-fetched 
images  of  Goethe's,  with  the  infinite  verity  and  nature  of  Euri- 
pides' scene,  will  see  how  far  the  great  imitator  here  falls  be- 
hind his  model.  Above  all,  Goethe  misses  the  truth  of  mak- 
ing the  moment  of  waking  a  moment  of  calm  and  sanity,  and 
cures  Orestes  suddenly  upon  the  prayer  of  his  sister,  and  a 
manly  personal  appeal  from  Pylades.  So  much  nearer  were 
the  Greeks  to  nature  ! 

The  actors  have  tampered  a  good  deal  with  the  text,  as  may 
be  seen  from  the  many  lines  rejected  by  later  critics,  but  our 
text  is  exceptionally  noted  in  the  MSS.  as  corrected  by  a  col- 
lation of  divers  copies.  The  second  argument,  which  discusses 
why  Electra  should  sit  at  Orestes'  feet,  and  not  his  head,  is  a 
curious  specimen  of  Alexandrian  or  rather  Byzantine  pedantry. 
There  are  special  recensions  by  Hermann  and  Porson. 

§  216.  The  Phtznissce  seem  to  have  appeared,  according  to  a 

1  w.  866-959.  2  w.  982,  sq. 


364  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvir. 

very  corrupt  and  doubtfully  emended  prefatory  note  in  a  Vene- 
tian MS.,  along  with  the  (Enomaus  and  Chrysippits?  of  which 
a  few  fragments  remain.  It  gained  the  second  prize  in  the 
archonship  of  an  unknown  Nausicrates,2  probably  during  Ol 
93.  It  is  really  a  tragedy  on  the  woes  of  the  house  of  Labdacus, 
but  is  called  after  its  chorus,  which  is  composed  of  Phoenician 
maidens  on  their  way  to  Delphi,  and  stopped  on  their  passage 
through  Thebes  by  the  invasion  of  the  Seven  Chiefs  under 
Adrastus.  There  would  indeed  be  some  difficulty  in  naming 
the  play  otherwise,  for  it  is  an  episodic  one,  consisting  of  a  series 
of  pictures,  all  connected  with  QEdipus'  family,  but  without  one 
central  figure  among  the  nine  characters — an  unusual  number 
— who  successively  appear.  The  name  Thebais,  given  to  it  by 
modern  imitators,  suggests  an  epos  and  not  a  drama.  Perhaps 
locasta  is  the  most  prominent  figure,  but  yet  her  death  is,  so 
to  speak,  only  subsidiary  to  the  sacrifice  of  Menoekeus,  and 
the  mutual  slaughter  of  the  brothers.  All  the  scenes  ot 
the  play,  though  loosely  connected,  are  full  of  pathos  and 
beauty,  and  hence  no  piece  of  Euripides  has  been  more  fre- 
quently copied  and  quoted.  The  conception  of  the  two 
brothers  is  very  interesting.  Polynices,  the  exile  and  assail- 
ant, is  the  softer  character,  and  relents  in  his  hate  at  the 
moment  of  his  death.  Eteocles,  on  the  contrary,  is  made,  with 
real  art,  to  die  in  silence ;  for  he  is  a  hard  and  cruel  tyrant, 
and  defends  his  case  by  a  mere  appeal  to  possession  of  the 
throne,  and  the  determination  to  hold  by  force  so  great  a 
prize.  Antigone  is  introduced  near  the  opening  only  for  the 
sake  of  the  celebrated  scene  on  the  wall,  when  her  old  nur- 
sery slave3  tells  her  the  various  chiefs,  as  in  the  scene 

1  According  to  Meineke  (Com.  Frag.  ii.  904,  note)  the  schol.  on 
Ran.  44  would  imply  that  it  came  out  as  the  middle  play  with  the  Hyp- 
sipyle  and  Antiope,  and  won  the  first  prize.  But  the  scholiast  may  be  re- 
ferring to  these  plays  as  separate  specimens  of  Euripides'  excellence,  and  he 
only  calls  them  /coAa,  which  implies  general  approbation,  but  not  neces- 
sarily the  first  place. 

-  Dindorf  suggests  that  he  was  a  suffectus,  or  locum  tenens,  the  proper 
archon  having  died  or  resigned. 

3  watSay<a-y6s.  Schiller,  in  his  version  of  the  passage,  is  seduced  by 
French  influences,  I  suppose,  into  calling  him  the  Hofmeister. 


CH.  xvir.  THE  PHCENISS&.  365 

between  Helen  and  Priam  in  the  Iliad.1  She  again  ap- 
pears at  the  close,  with  the  features  given  her  by  Sophocles 
in  his  Antigone  and  CEdipus  Coloneus  combined.  Perhaps 
the  most  brilliant  part  of  the  play  is  the  dialogue  between 
the  brothers,  and  locasta's  efforts  to  reconcile  them,  fol- 
lowed by  the  narrative  of  their  death-struggle.  The  speech 
of  Eteocles,2  asserting  that  as  he  holds  the  tyranny  he  will  keep 
it  by  force  in  spite  of  all  opposition,  is  a  peculiarly  character- 
istic passage,  and  may  be  compared  with  the  advice  given  to 
Solon  by  his  friends  (above,  p.  177).  If  the  choruses,  which  are 
very  elegant,  do  not  help  the  action  of  the  play,  and  are  rather 
calm  contemplations  of  the  mythical  history  of  Thebes,  Euri- 
pides might  defend  himself  by  pleading  that  he  had  accordingly 
assigned  them  to  a  body  of  foreign  maidens,  who  could  feel  but 
a  general  interest  in  the  action.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the 
crowding  of  incident  was  intended  as  a  direct  contrast  to 
^Eschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes,  which,  with  all  its  unity  of  pur- 
pose and  martial  fire,  is  very  barren  in  action.  The  long  de- 
scription of  the  Seven  Chiefs  in  that  play  is  distinctly  criticised 
as  undramatic  by  Euripides.3  There  are,  indeed,  all  through 
the  play,  reminiscences  ofboth^schylus  and  Sophocles. 

There  were  parodies  of  the  play,  called  Ph<znissce,  by  Aristo- 
phanes and  Strattis.  There  was  also  a  tragedy  of  Attius,  and 
an  Atellan  farce  of  Novius,  known  under  the  same  title,  the 
former  a  free  translation  of  Euripides.  Apart  from  Statius' 
Thebais,  there  is  a  Thebaid  by  Seneca,  and  then  all  man- 
ner of  old  French  versions,  uniting  the  supposed  perfec- 
tions of  both  these,  which  they  could  read,  with  those  of 
Euripides,  whom  they  only  knew  and  appreciated  imperfectly. 
Exceptionally  enough,  there  is  an  English  version  almost 
as  old  as  any  of  them,  the  locasta  of  George  Gascoigne  and 
Francis  Kinwelmersh  (1566),  a  motley  and  incongruous  piece, 
built  on  the  basis  of  the  Phxnissa.  It  professes  to  be  an 
independent  translation  of  Euripides,  but  I  was  surprised  to 

1  This  idea  has  been  borrowed  from  Homer  very  frequently  indeed. 
M.  Patin  cites  parallel  passages  from  Statins,   from  Tasso,  from  Walter 
Scott  (in  Ivanhoc),  and  from  Firdusi. 

2  vv.  500,  sq.  3  vv.  751-2. 


366  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE,  en.  xvii. 

find  it  really  to  be  a  literal  translation  of  Dolce's  Italian  version, 
without  any  trace  of  an  appeal  to  the  original.  Thus  the 
7rcu2aywyde  is  called  the  Bailo,  a  regular  Venetian  title.  Its 
chief  literary  interest  lies  in  the  loose  paraphrase  of  Eteocles' 
speech,  above  noticed,  which  appears  to  have  suggested  directly 
to  Shakspeare  the  speech  of  Hotspur  in  the  first  part  of 
Henry  'IV.  (i.  3)  : 

By  heaven,  methinks  it  were  an  easy  leap 

To  pluck  bright  Honour  from  the  pale-faced  moon, 

Or  dive  into  the  bottom  of  the  deep 

Where  fathom-line  could  never  touch  the  ground, 

And  pluck  up  drowned  Honour  by  the  locks  ; 

So  he,  that  doth  redeem  her  hence,  might  wear 

Without  corival  all  her  dignities. ' 

There  is  the  translation  of  Dolce  (Italian)  called  locasta, 
and  Antigones  of  Gamier  (1580)  and  Rotrou  (1638).  Then 
comes  the  early  play  of  Racine,  for  which  he  apologises,  the 
Thebaide,  on  les  Freres  ennemis.  He  rather  adds  to  than  alters 
incidents  in  Euripides.  But  as  to  characters,  he  raakss 
Eteocles  the  favourite  with  the  people,  he  misses  the  finer 
points  of  Polynices,  and  makes  Creon  a  wily  villain  pro- 
moting the  strife  for  his  own  ends.  The  love  of  Hsemon  and 
Antigone  is  of  course  brought  in ;  but  at  the  end,  upon  the 
death  of  Hasmon,  old  Creon  suddenly  comes  out  with  a  pas- 
sionate proposal  to  Antigone,  and  on  her  suicide  slays  himself. 
He  is  in  fact  the  successful  villain  of  the  piece,  whose  golden 
fruit  turns  to  ashes  at  the  moment  of  victory.  Alfieri  in  1783 
rehandled  the  well-worn  subject  in  his  Polinice,  to  whom  he 
restored  the  interest  lent  him  by  Euripides,  but  made  Eteocles 
the  horrible  and  hypocritical  villain  of  the  piece.  The  almost 
successful  reconciliation  is  broken  off  by  Eteocles'  attempt  (at 

1  So  far  as  I  know,  this  is  the  only  direct  contact  with,  or  rather  direct 
obligation  to,  the  Greek  tragedy  in  Shakespeare.  Here  are  the  lines  which 
Correspond  in  Euripides — the  likeness  is  but  slight,  yet  it  is  real  : 

&<TTpa>v  &v  «?A0oi/t'  cuOfpos  irpbs  avro\as 
KCLI  yfjs  evep8e,  Sin/orbs  S>v  Spaffai  roSe, 
T)JV  Qtiov  fie-yfoTTjj/  OJCTT'  ex6"'  fvpavviSa  K.T.\. 


CH.  xvii.  TPHIGENIA   IN  AULIS.  367 

the  instigation  of  Creon)  to  poison  Polynices,  whom  he  after- 
wards treacherously  stabs,  when  coming  to  seek  pardon  foi 
having  defeated  and  mortally  wounded  him.  This  version  was 
done  into  French  by  Ernest  Legouve  in  1799.  Schiller  has  not 
only  given  an  excellent  and  literal  version  of  part  of  the  play, 
but  has  taken  a  great  deal  from  its  incidents  in  his  Brant  von 
Messina;  there  is  a  translation  in  Halevy's  Grece  tragique. 
Its  popularity  gave  rise  to  many  interpolations  by  actors,  and 
the  general  reputation  of  the  play  has  produced  a  large  body 
of  scholia.  The  best  special  editions  are  by  Valckenaer,  Por- 
son,  Hermann,  and  Geel  (Leiden,  1846),  with  a  critical  ap- 
pendix by  Cobet. 

§  217.  After  Euripides'  death,  the  younger  Euripides  brought 
out  at  Athens  from  his  father's  literary  remains  a  tetralogy  con- 
taining the  Iphigenia  in  Aulis,  Alcmczon  (6  £m  Kopivdov),  Bac- 
chce?  and  a  forgotten  satirical  play.  With  this  tetralogy  he  gained 
the  first  prize — a  clear  proof  how  little  effect  upon  the  Athenian 
audience  had  been  produced  by  Aristophanes'  frogs,  which  chose 
the  moment  of  the  great  master's  death  to  insult  and  ridicule 
him.  It  is  not  impossible  that  a  recoil  in  the  public  from  such  un- 
generous enmity  may  have  contributed  to  the  success  of  the  pos- 
thumous dramas.  But  we  might  well  indeed  wonder  if  the  two 
plays  which  are  extant  had  failed  to  obtain  the  highest  honours. 
Unfortunately,  the  Iphigenia  was  left  incomplete  by  the  master, 
and  required  a  good  deal  of  vamping  and  arranging  for  stage 
purposes.  Hence  critics  have  in  the  first  instance  attri- 
buted some  of  its  unevennesses  to  the  subsequent  hand.  But 
other  larger  interpolations  followed,  some  by  old  and  well- 
practised  poets,  who  understood  Attic  diction,  others  by  mere 
poetasters,  who  have  defaced  this  great  monument  of  the 
poet's  genius  with  otiose  choral  odes  and  trivial  dialogue.  Such 
seems  to  be  the  history  of  the  text,  which  has  afforded  insol- 
uble problems  to  higher  criticism.  I  suspect  that,  as  usual, 
the  German  critics  have  been  too  trenchant,  and  that  on  the 
evidence  of  their  subjective  taste  they  have  rejected,  as  early 
interpolation,  a  good  deal  that  comes,  perhaps  unrevised,  from 
the  real  Euripides.  But  allowing  all  their  objections,  and 

'  We  learn  this  from  the  schol.  on  Aristophanes'  Ran.  v.  6". 


363  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

even  discounting  all  that  W.  Dindorf,  for  example,  has  enclosed 
in  brackets,  there  remains  a  complete  series  of  scenes,  fin- 
ished in  composition,  exquisite  in  pathos,  sustained  in  power, 
which  not  only  show  us  clearly  the  conception  of  the  master, 
but  his  execution,  and  compel  us  to  place  this  tragedy  among 
the  greatest  of  all  his  plays.  It  is  evident  that,  like  Sophocles, 
whose  Philoctdes  was  produced  in  advanced  age,  Euripides 
preserved  his  powers  to  the  last,  and  was  even  then  perfecting 
his  art,  so  that  his  violent  death,  at  the  age  of  seventy- four,  may 
literally  be  deplored  as  an  untimely  end. 

The  prologue,  at  least  in  substance,  of  the  play,  comes 
in,  not  at  the  opening,  but  after  a  very  beautiful  and  dra- 
matic scene  between  the  agitated  Agamemnon  and  an  old 
retainer,  who  through  the  night  has  watched  the  king  writing 
missives,  destroying  them  again,  and  evidently  racked  by 
perplexity  or  despair.  With  a  passing  touch  the  poet  describes 
the  stillness  of  the  calm  night  and  the  starlit  sky ;  and  though 
his  approximation  of  Sirius  to  the  Pleiades  may  be  astronomi- 
cally untenable,  he  seems  to  have  caught  with  great  truth  the 
character  of  a  long  spell  of  eas'.  wind,  which  is  wont  to  blow 
in  southern  Europe,  as  with  us,  at  the  opening  of  the  ship- 
ping season,  and,  having  lasted  all  day,  to  lull  into  a  calm. 
Hence  the  objection  brought  against  this  scene,  that  the  fleet 
at  Aulis  was  detained  by  contrary  winds,  loses  its  point.  For 
calm  nights  were  of  no  service  to  early  Greek  mariners,  who 
always  landed  in  the  evening,  and  might  thus  be  wind-bound  in 
a  spell  of  east  wind  with  the  stillest  night. 

This  dialogue  in  anapaests  is  to  us  a  far  more  dramatic  open- 
ing than  the  prologue,  and  even  when  it  comes,  as  an  ex- 
planation from  Agamemnon,  it  interrupts  the  action  tamely 
enough.  But  here  already  there  are  marks  of  interpolation, 
and  it  seems  as  if  a  prologue,  which  Euripides  had  perhaps 
exceptionally  abandoned  for  dramatic  effect,  but  had  left  in 
outline,  was  clumsily  adapted  to  fill  up  a  gap  in  the  dialogue.  * 

1  This  plan  of  blending  the  prologue  with  the  opening  dialogue  appears 
in  the  Knights  and  Wasps  of  Aristophanes,  but  not  elsewhere  in  tragedy. 
I?ut  in  the  frags,  of  the  Andromeda,  preserved  in  the  scholia  on  Aristo- 
phanes' Tliesmophoriaziisx  (v.  1038),  we  have  the  opening  lines — a  lyric 


CH.  XVII.  THE  IPHIGENIA  IN  A  ULIS.  369 

With  anxious  detail  the  old  man  is  at  last  despatched  by  Aga- 
memnon to  countermand  the  arrival  of  Clytemnestra,  and 
of  Iphigenia,  who  had  been  sent  for  under  the  pretence  of  a 
proposed  marriage  of  the  princess  with  Achilles,  but  really  to 
be  sacrificed  to  Artemis,  and  obtain  favourable  weather  for  the 
fleet.  This  deceit  is  discovered  by  the  old  man,  when  he  asks 
in  wonder  how  Achilles  will  tolerate  the  postponement  of  his 
marriage,  which  had  been  announced  in  the  camp.  On  his  de- 
parture, the  chorus  of  maidens  from  Aulis  begin  an  ode  descrip- 
tive of  the  splendours  of  the  Greek  fleet  and  army,  which  seems 
considerably  interpolated,  though  the  main  idea  is  doubtless 
that  intended  by  Euripides.  The  next  scene  opens  with  an 
angry  altercation  between  Menelaus  and  the  old  man,  who 
has  been  intercepted  by  the  former,  and  his  missive  opened 
and  "read.  The  old  man  protests  against  such  dishonourable 
conduct,  and  upon  Agamemnon  coming  out.  the  dispute  passes 
into  the  hands  of  the  two  brothers.  Menelaus  upbraids  Aga- 
memnon's weakness,  and  his  breaking  of  his  word ;  Agamem- 
non retorts  with  pressing  his  claims  as  a  father  and  a  king.  The 
dispute  descends,  as  always  with  Euripides,  into  wrangling,  and 
the  imputing  of  low  motives  ;  in  the  midst  of  it  Agamemnon  is 
terror-stricken  by  the  news  thaj  his  wife  and  daughter  with  the 
little  Orestes  have  reached  the  camp,  and  have  been  received 
with  acclamation  by  the  army.  His  despair  melts  the  ambitious 
heart  of  Menelaus,  who  gives  way,  and  beseeches  his  brother 
not  to  sacrifice  Iphigenia.  But  now  Agamemnon  in  his  turn 
remains  firm,  chiefly,  however,  from  cowardice,  and  a  feeling 
that  as  his  daughter  has  really  arrived,  her  fate  is  now  beyond 
his  control.1 

The  chorus,  in  an  ode  of  which  the  genuine  part  is  very 
beautiful,  deprecate  violent  and  unlawful  love,  with  its  dread 
consequences.  Then  follows  the  greeting  of  Agamemnon  by 

monody  of  the  heroine,  and  a  night  scene.  This  proves  those  critics  to  be 
wrong  who  insist  upon  Euripides  having  always  opened  his  plays  with  a 
prologue.  I  believe  the  Ion  to  be  another  example,  where  the  dialogue  of 
Ion  and  Creusa  replaced  the  prologue— the  existing  one  being  wholly 
spurious. 

1  Cf.  the  parallel  of  Polynices  in  Sophocles,  above,  p.  304. 
1 6* 


370  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvil. 

his  innocent  daughter,  and  his  ill-concealed  despair — a  scene 
which  none  of  the  imitators  has  dared  to  modify ;  and  Cly- 
temnestra  begins  asking  motherly  practical  questions  about 
her  future  son-in-law.  But  when  Agamemnon  proposes  that 
she  shall  return  home,  and  leave  him  to  arrange  the  wedding, 
she  stoutly  refuses,  and  asserts  her  right  to  the  control  of  do- 
mestic affairs.  This  adds  to  the  perplexity  of  the  wretched 
king,  who  leaves  the  stage  defeated  in  his  schemes  of  petty 
deceit.  Presently  Achilles  enters,  and  is  hailed  by  Clytem- 
nestra,  to  his  great  surprise,  as  her  future  son-in-law.  This 
somewhat  comic  situation  is  redeemed  by  the  perfect  man- 
ners, and  the  graceful  courtesy  of  Achilles,  whose  character  in 
this  play  approaches  nearest  of  all  the  Greek  tragic  charac- 
ters to  that  of  a  modern  gentleman.  But  the  scene  be- 
comes tragic  enough  when  the  old  retainer  stops  Achilles, 
who  is  leaving  to  seek  Agamemnon,  and  discloses  to  him 
and  to  Clytemnestra  the  horrible  design.  Achilles  responds 
calmly  and  nobly  to  Clytemnestra's  appeal  for  help,  and  pro- 
mises to  protect  her  daughter  with  the  sword,  should  she  be 
unable  to  persuade  her  husband  to  relent.  He  deprecrates 
with  great  courtesy  Clytenmestra's  proposal  to  bring  Iphi- 
genia  in  person  from  the  ten.ts  to  join  her  in  personal  sup- 
plications. After  a  choral  ode  on  the  marriage  of  Peleus  and 
Thetis,  Agamemnon  returns,  and  is  met  by  Clytemnestra,  who 
has  left  her  daughter  in  wild  tears  and  lamentation l  on  hear- 
ing of  her  proposed  fate,  and  compels  him  to  confess  his  whole 
policy.  She  then  attacks  him  in  a  bitter  and  powerful  speech, 
which  is  meant  to  contrast  strongly  with  that  of  Iphigenia. 
This  innocent  and  simple  pleading  of  an  affectionate  child 
for  life  at  the  hands  of  her  father,  with  her  despair  at  the 
approach  of  death,  and  her  appeal  to  her  infant  brother  to  join 
in  her  tears,  is  the  finest  passage  in  Euripides,  and  of  its 
kind  perhaps  the  finest  passage  in  alt  Greek  tragedy.  Upon 
Agamemnon's  craven  flight,  she  bursts  out  into  a  lyrical 
monody,  which  is  interrupted  by  an  approaching  crowd  and 
tumult,  and  the  actual  entrance  of  Achilles  in  arms,  who  tells 

1  v.  IIOI  :  iroAAoy  itlffa  u.tra0o\as  oSvp/jLaruv. 


CH.  Xvii.  MODERN  IMITATIONS.  371 

Clytemnestra  that  the  whole  camp  are  in  arms  against  him,  that 
his  own  soldiers  have  deserted  him  and  are  led  on  by  Odysseus, 
but  that  he  will  do  battle  for  her  to  the  death.  This  rapid 
dialogue  in  trochaic  metre  is  followed  by  the  second  great 
speech  of  Iphigenia  (in  the  same  metre)  in,  which,  with  sudden 
resolve,  she  declares  that  her  death  is  for  the  public  good,  and 
that  her  clinging  to  life  will  but  entail  misery  upon  her  friends  ; 
she  therefore  devotes  herself  to  the  deity,  and  resignedly  braves 
the  fate  from  which  she  had  but  lately  shrunk  in  terror.  Achilles 
is  struck  with  admiration,  and  speaks  out  his  regrets  that  the 
pretended  marriage  was  no  reality,  but  he  bows  to  her  decision, 
perhaps  because  it  would  have  been  impious  to  defraud  the 
gods  of  a  voluntary  victim  ;  yet  he  proposes  to  bring  his  arms 
to  the  altar,  in  case  she  should  change  her  mind  at  the  last. 
The  affecting  adieus  of  the  princess  to  her  mother  and  her 
little  brother,  and  her  enthusiastic  hymn  as  she  leaves  them  for 
her  sacrifice,  conclude  the  genuine  part  of  the  play.  A  messen- 
ger's narrative  of  her  death  was  doubtless  intended  by  the  poet, 
but  he  did  not  live  to  complete  the  work.  It  appears  from  two 
verses  cited  by  ^Elian,  in  which  Artemis  announces  that  she 
will  substitute  a  horned  hind  for  Iphigenia,  that  the  piece  really 
ended  with  this  consolation,  from  the  goddess  ex  machina.  But 
to  modern  readers  the  epilogue  is  no  greater  loss  than  the  pro- 
logue, if  such  there  was.  The  real  drama  is  complete,  and 
requires  not  the  dull  interpolations  with  which  our  MSS. 
conclude. 

There  were  Iphigenias  by  both  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles, 
which  were  soon  obscured  by  the  present  play.  Both  Nsevius 
and  Ennius  composed  well-known  tragedies  upon  its  model. 
Erasmus  translated  it  into  Latin  in  1524  ;  T.  Sibillet  into 
French  in  1549.  Dolce  gave  an  Italian  version  in  1560.  There 
are  obscure  French  versions  by  Rotrou  (1640),  and  by  Leclerc 
and  Coras  (1675),  the  latter  in  opposition  to  the  great  imitation 
of  Racine  in  1674.  Racine's  remarkable  play,  written  by  a  man 
who  combined  a  real  knowledge  of  Euripides  with  poetic  talent 
of  his  own,  is  a  curious  specimen  of  the  effects  of  French  court 
manners  in  spoiling  the  simplicity  of  a  great  masterpiece.  In 
order  to  prevent  the  sacrifice  of  so  virtuous  a  person  as  Iphi- 


372  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

genia,  Racine  takes  from  an  obscure  tradition  an  illegitimate 
daughter  of  Helen  (by  Theseus),  whom  he  makes  the  rival  of 
Iphigenia  in  the  love  of  Achilles,  and  a  main  actor  in  the  play. 
He  substitutes  Ulysses  for  Menelaus,  and  inserts  many  features 
from  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad  into  the  disputes  between  Aga- 
memnon and  the  angry  lover.  As  Racine  himself  honestly 
confesses,  the  passages  directly  borrowed  from  Homer  and 
Euripides  were  those  which  struck  even  his  Paris  audience.  The 
character  of  Agamemnon  is,  however,  spoilt  by  giving  him  that 
absolute  control  over  his  family  and  subjects,  which  only 
priestcraft  could  endanger,  and  the  French  Iphigenia,  with  her 
court  manners,  and  her  studied  politeness,  is  a  sorry  copy  of 
the  equally  pure  and  noble,  but  infinitely  more  natural  Greek 
maiden.  A  comparison  of  her  speech  to  her  father,  when 
pleading  for  her  life,  in  both  plays,  will  be  a  perfect  index  to  the 
contrast.1 

An  English  version  of  Racine's  play,  called '  Achilles,  or  I  ph. 
in  Aulis,'  was  brought  out  at  Drury  Lane  in  1 700,  and  the  author 
in  his  preface  to  the  print  boasts  that  it  was  well  received, 
though  another  Iphigenia  failed  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  about 
the  same  time.  This  rare  play  is  bound  up  with  West's  Hecuba 
in  the  Bodleian.  The  famous  opera  of  Gluck  (1774)  is  based 
on  Racine,  and  there  was  another  operatic  revival  of  the  play  in 
Dublin  in  the  year  1846,  when  Miss  Helen  Faucit  appeared  as 
the  heroine.  The  version  (by  J.  W.  Calcraft)  was  based  on 
Potter's  translation,  and  the  choruses  were  set  to  music,  after 
the  model  of  Mendelssohn,  by  R.  M.  Levey.  I  fancy  this 
revival  was  limited  to  Dublin.  Schiller  translated  Euripides' 

1  Qui  ne  sent  la  difference  des  deux  morceaux?  C'est,  chez  Racine, 
une  princesse  qui  de'tourne  d'elle-meme  sa  douleur,  et  la  reporte  sur  les 
objets  de  son  affection  [sc.  sa  mere  et  son  amant]  ;  qui,  soigneuse  de  sa 
dignite,  demande  la  vie  sans  paraitre  craindre  la  mort.  C'est,  chez 
Euripide,  une  jeune  fille,  surprise  tout  a  coup,  au  milieu  de  1'heureuse 
securite  de  son  age,  par  un  terrible  arret,  qui  repousse  avec  desespoir  le 
glaive  leve  sur  sa  tete,  qui  caresse,  qui  supplie,  qui  cherche  et  poursuit  la 
nature  jusqu'au  fond  des  entrailles  d'un  pere,  &c.  (Patin,  Etudes,  iii.  p. 
35.)  But  I  quite  differ  with  him  when  he  thinks  that  the  elegant  verses  of 
Racine  are  in  any  degree  approaching  in  excellence  to  the  passionate 
prayer  in  Euripides. 


CH.  xva.  THE  BACCH&.  373 

play  (1790),  and  there  is  an  English  poetical  version  by  Cart- 
wright,  about  1867  (with  the  Medea  and  Jph.  Taur.). 

The  translation  of  Schiller,  which  ends  with  the  depar- 
ture of  Iphigenia,  is  very  good  indeed.  It  is  divided  into 
acts  and  scenes,  and  might  be  played  with  the  omission  of 
the  choruses.  He  has  appended  not  only  notes,  comparing 
his  own  version  of  certain  passages  with  that  of  Brnmoy, 
but  a  general  estimate  of  the  play,  in  which  he  has  been  too 
severe  in  discovering  defects,  though  he  highly  appreciates 
the  salient  beauties  of  the  piece.  Thus  he  thinks  the  weak 
and  vacillating  Agamemnon  a  failure,  whereas  this  seems  to 
me  one  of  the  most  striking  and  natural,  as  well  as  Homeric, 
of  personages.  He  also  protests  against  the  dark  threat  of 
Clytemnestra,  which  may  not  be  very  noble  or  appropriate  to 
the  fond  mother  of  the  stage,  but  is  certainly  very  Greek  and 
very  human. 

The  special  editions  of  note  are  Monk's,  Markland's  (with 
additions  of  Elmsley's,  Leipzig,  1822),  then  G.  Hermann's,  and 
Vater's  (1845).  A  great  number  of  critical  monographs  are 
cited  by  Bernhardy,  of  which  those  ofVitz  (Torgau,  1862-3)  and 
H.  Hennig  (Berlin,  1870)  are  the  latest,  and  discuss  fully  the 
many  difficulties  of  the  play. 

§  218.  The  jBacchce,  which  was  composed  for  the  court  of 
Archelaus,  is  a  brilliant  piece  of  a  totally  different  character,  and 
shows  that  the  old  connection  of  plays  in  trilogies  had  been 
completely  abandoned.  Instead  of  dealing  with  the  deeper 
phases  of  ordinary  human  nature,  the  poet  passes  into  the 
field  of  the  marvellous  and  the  supernatural,  and  builds  his 
drama  on  the  introduction  of  a  new  faith,  and  the  awful  punish- 
ment of  the  sceptical  Pentheus,  who,  with  his  family,  jeers  at 
the  worship  of  Dionysus,  and  endeavours  to  put  it  down  by 
force.  His  mother  Agave,  and  her  sisters,  are  driven  mad 
into  the  mountains,  where  they  celebrate  the  wild  orgies  of 
Bacchus  with  many  attendant  miracles.  Pentheus,  who  at  first 
attempts  to  imprison  the  god,  and  then  to  put  down  the  Bac- 
chanals by  force  of  arms,  is  deprived  of  his  senses,  is  made 
ridiculous  by  being  dressed  in  female  costume,  and  led  out  by 
the  god  to  the  wilds  of  Cithaeroi ',  where  he  is  torn  in  pieces  by 


374  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

Agave  and  the  other  princesses.  The  lament  of  Agave,  when 
>he  comes  in  with  the  bleeding  head,  and  is  taught  by  old 
Cadmus  of  her  fearful  delusion,  has  been  lost ;  but  we  know  its 
general  tenor  from  the  rhetor  Apsines  and  from  an  imitation  in 
the  religious  drama  called  Christus  Pattens  (ascribed  to  Gregory 
Nazianzen).  While  the  wild  acts  of  the  new  Msenads,  whom 
the  god  has  compelled  to  rush  from  Thebes  into  the  moun- 
tains, are  told  in  two  splendid  narratives*  of  messengers,  the 
chorus,  consisting  of  Asiatic  attendants  on  the  god,  show 
by  contrast  in  their  splendid  hymns  what  joys  and  hopes  a 
faithful  submission  will  ensure.  These  lyric  pieces  are  very 
prominent  in  the  play,  which,  though  sometimes  called Pent/ieus, 
is  more  rightly  called  after  its  most  important  chorus,  and 
is  among  the  best  left  us  by  Euripides.  It  is  of  course  un- 
dramatic  that  Pentheu's,  who  proceeds  so  violently  against  all 
the  other  Maenads,  should  leave  this  chorus  to  sing  its  dithy- 
rambs in  peace,  but  ordinary  probabilities  must  often  be  vio- 
lated for  such  a  personage  as  the  chorus  of  a  Greek  tragedy. 

The  general  tenor  of  the  play,  which  may  contain  the 
maturest  reflections  of  the  poet  on  human  life,  is  that  of  acqui- 
escence in  the  received  faith,  and  of  warning  against  sceptical 
doubts  and  questionings.  And  yet  it  is  remarkable  that  the 
struggle  is  about  a  new  and  strange  faith,  and  that  the  old  men  in 
the  play,  Cadmus  and  Teiresias,  are  the  only  Thebans  ready  to 
embrace  the  novel  and  violent  worship,  which  ill  suits  their  de- 
crepitude. We  may  imagine  that  among  the  half-educated  Mace- 
donian youth,  with  whom  literature  was  coming  into  fashion,  the 
poet  met  a  good  deal  of  that  insolent  secondhand  scepticism, 
which  is  so  offensive  to  a  deep  and  serious  thinker,  and  he  may 
have  desired  to  show  that  he  was  not,  as  they  doubtless  hailed 
him,  an  apostle  of  this  random  arrogance.  It  is  also  remark- 
able how  nearly  this  play,  at  the  very  end  of  the  development 
of  Greek  tragedy,  approaches  those  lyrical  cantatas  with  which 
^Eschylus  began.  The  chorus  is  here  reinstated  in  its  full 
dignity.  The  subject  of  Bacchic  worship  naturally  occupied  a 
prominent  place  in  the  theatre  consecrated  to  that  very  worship, 
and  it  seems  that  every  Greek  dramatist,  from  Thespis  and 
Phrynichus  down  to  the  ignoble  herd  of  later  tragedians  known 


CH.  XVII.  THE  RHESUS.  375 

to  us  through  Suidas,  wrote  plays  upon  the  subject.  Sophocles 
alone  may  be  an  exception. 

But  the  play  of  Euripides  always  stood  prominent  among  all 
its  rivals.  It  was  being  recited  at  the  Parthian  court  when  the 
head  of  Crassus  was  brought  in,  and  carried  by  the  Agave  on 
the  stage.  It  was  imitated  by  Theocritus  in  Doric  hexameters,1 
apparently  as  part  of  a  hymn  to  Dionysus.  It  was  produced 
upon  the  Roman  stage  by  Attius.  It  is  quoted  by  every  rheto- 
rician, by  every  Latin  poet  of  note.2  It  has  even  suggested, 
with  its  incarnate  god,  his  persecution,  and  his  vengeance,  a 
Christian  imitation.  But  in  modern  days,  its  fate  was  different. 
The  marvels  and  miracles  with  which  it  abounds,  and  the  promi- 
nent vindictiveness  of  its  deity,  made  it  unfit  for  the  modern  stage. 
In  the  last  century  A.  W.  Schlegel  and  Goethe  alone,  so  far  as 
I  know,  appreciated  it.  In  our  own  time,  the  play  has  again 
taken  the  high  place  it  held  in  classical  days,  and  is  reckoned 
one  of  the  best  of  its  author.  There  are  special  recensions  by 
Elmsley  and  G.  Hermann,  and  commentaries  by  Schone  and 
Mr.  R.  Y.  Tyrrell  (1872),  besides  several  school  editions,  and 
special  tracts  in  Germany.  The  text  of  one  of  the  two  remain- 
ing MSS.,  the  Florentine  C,  breaks  off  at  v.  752,  so  that  for  the 
rest  we  depend  altogether  on  the  Palatine  (287)  in  the  Vatican. 
There  are  blank  pages  left  in  the  codex  C  by  the  scribe,  who 
went  on  to  other  plays  and  never  finished  the  transcription. 

§  219.  I  have  kept  for  the  last  of  the  tragedies  the  Rhesus, 
which,  were  it  accepted  as  Euripides',  should  have  come  first, 
as  all  those,  since  Crates,  who  defend  it  as  genuine  make  it  an 
early  work  of  the  youthful  poet,  and  place  its  date  about  the 
time  when  the  ambitious  designs  of  Athens  were  directed  to- 
wards Thrace,  and  resulted  in  the  founding  of  Amphipolis.  This 
would  place  the  drama  about  440  B.C.  But  though  so  great  a 
critic  as  Lachmann  thought  it  even  the  work  of  an  earlier  con- 
temporary of  ^Eschylus,  and  though  some  of  the  Alexandrian 
critics  recognised  in  it  the  traces  of  Sophocles'  hand,  the 
weight  of  modern  opinion,  since  Valckenaer's  discussion,  leans 
to  its  being  a  later  production,  written  at  the  close  of  the 
Attic  period,  and  about  the  time  of  Menander.  For  there  is 
1  Idyll  xxvi.  2  Cf.  for  a  list,  Patin,  iv.  239. 


376  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

undoubtedly  a  waste  and  ineptness  of  economy — the  intro- 
duction of  two  almost  idle  characters,  vEneas  and  Paris,  the 
appearance  of  Athena  ex  machina  in  the  midd"le  of  the  playr 
and  the  still  stranger  thrcnos  of  the  mother  of  Rhesus,  also 
ex  machina — there  are  also  scholasticisms  of  various  kinds, 
both  in  thought  and  diction,  which  seem  to  indicate  the  work 
of  a  weaker  poet  copying  better  models.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Alexandrian  critics  received  it  as  genuine,  and  have  left  us 
very  full  and  valuable  comments  on  the  earlier  part,  as  well  as 
extracts  (in  one  of  their  prefaces)  of  two  prologues,  one  of 
which  was  ascribed  to  the  actors,  but  neither  of  which  appears 
in  our  text.  It  is  moreover,  certain  that  Euripides  wrote  a 
Rhesus,  but  if,  as  one  of  the  prefaces  tells  us,  it  was  called 
yvriaioe,  this  must  have  been  meant  to  distinguish  it  from 
another  as  vodo<;  (as  in  the  case  of  the  Alrvalai  yvijawi,  and 
i  otfat,  in  the  catalogue  of  ^Eschylus'  remains)  ;  and  it  is  more 
than  probable  that  the  play  we  possess  is  the  spurious  one,  and 
not  from  the  hand  of  Euripides.  For,  besides  the  faults  above 
mentioned,  and  the  many  peculiarities  of  a  diction  which  seems 
rather  eclectic  than  original,  it  wants  the  two  most  prominent 
features  of  his  extant  plays,  pathos  and  sententious  wisdom. 

Nevertheless,  its  merits  have  been  by  many  unduly  depre- 
ciated. It  is  a  bold  and  striking  picture  of  war  and  camp  life, 
producing  an  impression  not  unlike  Schiller's  Wallenstein's 
Lager.  Choral  odes  are  dispensed  with  as  inappropriate  to 
a  night-watch,  and  there  is  at  least  one  exquisite  epic  passage 
on  the  approach  of  Dawn.1  The  bragging  of  both  Hector 

1  w.  527-36: 

rivos  a  tpvXaKa  ;  rts  auei'/3ei 
TOV  f/jidv  ;  irpwTa 
Sverai  (njjueia  ical  eirrtiTOpOi 

H\€idSes  aldepiai  •  jueVa  5'  alerbs  oiipavov  vor'drai. 
typterdf,  ri  /j.e\\er(  •  Konav 
eypfTf  vpbs  <pv\a.Kdv. 
ov  \fvffffere  fj.rjvdSos  aXyXav  ; 
da>s  5rJ  ireAas  cues 

•yryverai,  Kai  ns  irpoSp6fj.wv  oSf  y*  (ffrlv  atrrijp. 
w.  546-55  :         Kal  fifyv  &iti>,  ~S,if».6tvTos 
Koiras 


CH.  xvil.  THE   CYCLOPS.  377 

and  Rhesus  estranges  the  reader's  sympathy,  so  that  the 
death  of  the  latter  excites  but  little  pity  ;  the  whole  interest 
lies  in  the  changing  scenes  and  fortunes  of  an  anxious  night 
amid  '  excursions  and  alarums.'  The  scholia  to  this  play  were 
first  fully  published  in  the  Glasgow  edition  of  1821  (with  the 
Troades),  and  then  with  critical  and  explanatory  notes  in  the 
edition  of  Vater  (1837).  There  are  numerous  monographs 
upon  its  age,  style,  and  authorship,  in  which  the  large  diver- 
gence of  opinion  on  the  same  facts  affords  an  admirable 
specimen  of  the  complete  subjectivity  of  most  of  the  so-called 
higher  criticism. 

§  220.  There  remains,  however,  another  genuine  play  of 
Euripides  —  the  Cyclops  —  which  must  be  separated  from  the 
tragedies,  as  being  the  only  extant  specimen  of  a  satyric  drama. 
I  have  above  (p.  233)  discussed  the  general  features  of  this  sort 
of  play,  which  is  carefully  distinguished  by  the  critics  from  all 
species  of  comedy,  even  from  parody,  of  which  I  think  there 
are  distinct  traces  in  the  Cydops.  As  Plato  saw  clearly,1 
the  talents  for  the  pathetic  and  for  the  humorous  are  closely 
allied,  and  we  should  wonder  how  it  was  that  no  tragic  poet 
among  the  Greeks  ever  wrote  comedy,  did  we  not  find  that 
scope  for  comic  powers  was  provided  in  this  '  sportive  tragedy.' 
It  is  indeed  strange  how  the  sombre  and  staid  genius  of 
Euripides  condescends  to  gross  license  in  this  field  ;  and  no 
doubt  if  we  had  a  specimen  from  ^Eschylus  or  Pratinas  — 
the  acknowledged  masters  of  it  —  wre  should  find  that  here, 
as  elsewhere,  the  Greeks  preset  ved  their  supremacy  in  litera- 
ture. There  is  great  grace  and  even  beauty  in  the  extant  play, 
though  we  can  hardly  imagine  Euripides'  taste  as  lying  in 
that  direction.  Silenus  (who  speaks  the  prologue)  and  his 


y-flpv'i  TratSo\fTcap  fj.t\oiroibi'  ai]5ovls 
tfSrj  8e  vffj-ovfft  /car'  "I5av 


ffvpiyyos  lav  Karaicovca  ' 
6f\yti  5'  ufj.fj.aros  tSpav 

VTTVOS  '  aSiffros  yap  e0a  $Ae</><£poiy  irpbs  ctovs. 
1  Symposium,  sub  fin. 


378  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

satyrs  are  in  search  for  Dionysus,  who  (according  to  the 
Homeric  hymn)  has  been  carried  into  the  western  seas  by 
pirates.  But  they  are  thrown  on  the  coast  of  Sicily,  and  made 
slaves  by  Polyphemus,  who  for  dramatic  reasons  cannot  devour 
them  as  he  does  other  visitors.  The  opening  chorus  is  very 
graceful  and  pastoral,  reminding  us  strongly  of  scenes  in  Theo- 
critus. As  it  is  little  read  I  shall  quote  it.1  Odysseus  then 

1  VV.  41-81  :         ira  STJ  fjLOi  yfvva'tcav  fj.ev  irarfpuv, 
yevvaiuv  8'  *K  roKaStav, 
•no.  Sfi  fjLOi  vifffffi  ffKoirtXovs  ; 
ov  ra5'  vir-f]ve/j.os  at/pa 
Ka.1  iroiTjpa  POTO.VO, 
Stvaev  ff  vSup  iroTa.fJicoi'. 
tv  Triffrpais  /C€?TOI  ire'Aas  &v- 
rpcav,  ov  aoi  jSAaxal  re/cfW. 
I^UTT',  ov  rciS'  ovv  ov  rdSe  vf/j.e't, 
ou5'  av  K\tTvv  Spoffepdv; 
o>-fl,  ptyw  irerpov  TO^O  ffov, 
viray'  S>  vva,y'  &  KfpdffTa 
ioipov 


ffTrapytavrds  /J.QI  rovs  fj.affrovs 

8e'£at  Q^Xaiffi  ffiropds, 

&s  \fiireis  apvSiv  Oa\dfiois. 

TTOBoVff'l   ff''  ajJ.€p6KOtTOl 


fls  av\dv  TTOT',  afj 
iroirjpovs  \nrovffa  vofids, 
Alrvatdiv  elffei  ffKOirt\<av  ; 
ov  rdSe  Bp6/juos,  ov  rdSf  %opol 
Ba/cx«'  Te  6vpcro<f>6poi, 
ov  rvfjLirdvuv  a\a.\ayfnol 
Kp'fivaiffi  •trap'1  vSpoxvrois, 
OVK  olvov  x\w/)ol  ffraydvfs, 
ov  NuffO  /tero  Nv/Atpav. 


fj.f\ir<t}  irpbs  rav  ' 


Ba/cxa's  ffvv  \fvKoiroffiv. 
S>  <pi\os  Si  <j>i 


CH.  xvii.  THE  CYCLOPS.  379 

appears,  and  his  adventure  with  the  Cyclops  occupies  the  rest 
of  the  plot,  in  which  the  Odyssey  is  adhered  to  as  closely  as 
was  possible,  consistent  with  the  addition  of  a  chorus  of 
satyrs,  and  the  necessity  for  Odysseus'  free  egress  from  the 
cave  to  narrate  the  cannibal  feast  of  the  Cyclops.  The  satyrs 
are  represented  as  a  most  sympathetic  but  cowardly  chorus, 
desirous  to  help  Odysseus  and  escape  with  him,  but  far  more 
desirous  to  drink  his  wine  than  to  incur  any  danger  in  aid- 
ing him  to  blind  the  Cyclops.  The  scene  in  which  Silenus 
acts  as  cupbearer  to  Polyphemus,  and  keeps  helping  himself,  is 
really  comic,  and  the  frank  cynicism  of  Polyphemus'  brutal 
philosophy1  is  expressed  in  an  admirable  speech.  Odysseus' 
impassioned  exclamation,  when  he  hears  it,  is  in  the  highest 
tragic  vein,  nor  does  the  hero  anywhere  condescend  to  respond 
to  the  wicked  jokes  of  the  satyrs.  The  whole  work  is  a  light 
and  pleasant  afterpiece,  but  seems  to  me  to  have  required  much 
more  acting  than  the  tragedies  ;  and  I  suppose  the  costume 
worn  by  Odysseus  to  have  been  far  less  pompous,  and  his  figure 
less  stuffed  out  than  in  tragedy ;  so  that  this  would  be  possible. 
With  this  condition,  it  must  have  been  an  effective  piece,  and 
was  possibly  preserved  as  being  better  than  the  seven  others 
known  from  the  same  author.  There  are  few  editions,  and  no 
imitations  of  this  play.  A  recension  by  Hermann,  a  German 
version  by  Scholl,  and  a  few  good  monographs,  such  as  the 
chapter  in  Patin's  Etudes,  are  all  that  can  be  cited  as  of  special 
import.  Shelley  has  fortunately  left  us  a  translation  (with  a 
few  omissions),  which  is  invaluable  for  such  English  readers  as 
cannot  compass  the  somewhat  difficult  original.  The  play  takes 
its  place,  of  course,  in  the  complete  editions  and  translations, 
with  the  tragedies. 

§  221.  A  full  review  of  the  1,100  extant  Fragments  would  be 

£ycb  8'  6  ffbs  irp6ffiro\os 
Orjrevu  KvK\wiri 

T<f  (J.OVO$fpKTq, 

SoDXoy  aXaivuv  <rvv  raSe 
Tpdyov  -)(Xa.iva  /ueA.ea 
eras  -)(u>p\s  (JxAi'ay. 
1  vv.  316,  sq. 


380  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

here  impossible.  Some  of  them  are  sufficient  to  give  us  an  idea 
of  the  plot  of  famous  plays  now  lost,  but  most  of  them  are  only 
selected  for  philosophic  depth  or  beauty  of  expression.  I  have 
referred  above  (p.  312)  to  the  analysis  of  the  Philoctetes  given  by 
Dion  Chrysostom.  There  are  also  a  good  many  titles  cited  by 
the  Aristophanic  scholia  in  explanation  of  the  parodies  of  Euri- 
pides, with  which  the  comedies  abounded.  It  may  safely  be 
asserted,  that  had  we  no  other  evidence  of  the  poet's  work  than 
these  fragments,  we  should  probably  have  reversed  the  judgment 
of  the  old  critics,  and  placed  him  first  among  the  tragedians. 
For  in  grace  of  style  and  justice  of  proverbial  philosophy  he  has 
no  rival  but  Menander,  with  whom  indeed,  as  with  the  new 
comedy  generally,  his  points  of  contact  are  many.  But  in  sim- 
plicity and  purity  of  diction  he  far  exceeds  ^schylus  and 
Sophocles.  Thus  there  is  hardly  a  single  curious  or  out-of-the- 
-way word  quoted  by  the  lexicographers  from  his  poetry ;  but 
rather  innumerable  moral  sayings  and  pathetic  reflections  on 
human  life  (in  Stobaeus),  many  deep  physical  speculations  in 
the  Christian  Apologists '  and  their  adversaries  ;  many  striking 
points  by  the  rhetoricians.  Apart  from  the  spurious  Danae,  of 
which  the  opening  is  preserved  in  the  Palatine  MS.,  there  is  a 
large  fragment  of  the  Phaethon,  from  which  one  of  the  choruses 
is  very  beautiful.2  Goethe  attempted  a  restoration  of  the  play 
from  the  fragments.  A  new  fragment  of  forty-four  lines  has 
been  found  in  Egypt,  but  has  not  yet  been  published. 

The  Erechtheus  is  now  remarkable  for  having  given  Mr. 
Swinburne  not  only  the  plot  of  his  like-named  tragedy,  but  one 
of  the  finest  of  the  speeches — that  of  Praxithea — to  which  he 
has  acknowledged  his  obligations.  It  seems  that  this  play 
brought  out  prominently  not  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  daughter, 
but  the  patriotic  devotion  of  the  mother.  The  daughter  is  not 
even  specially  named  in  our  fragments.  Mr.  Swinburne  has 
made  her  a  second  heroine  in  his  version,  but  somewhat  cold 
and  statuesque,  neither  acting  on  her  own  responsibility,  and 
as  the  eldest  of  the  house,  like  Macaria,  nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
showing  the  simple  innocence  and  instinctive  horror  of  death 

1  Cf.  frags.  596,  639,  836,  935. 

2  vv.  25-36. 


CH.  xvn.  EURIPIDES'   INNOVATIONS.  381 

which  we  find  in  Iphigenia.  His  choruses  are,  moreover,  far 
too  long  and  exuberant  for  a  really  Greek  play,  however 
splendid  they  may  be  in  themselves.  I  note  these  points  not 
by  way  of  criticism,  which  I  should  not  venture,  but  to  indi- 
cate to  any  English  reader,  that  he  must  look  to  actual  trans- 
lations to  obtain  an  accurate  notion  of  the  course  Of  a  Greek 
play.  There  are,  besides  the  great  speech  of  Praxithea,  two 
important  fragments  from  Euripides'  play — one  the  farewell 
advice  of  a  father  to  his  son,  very  similar  to  that  of  Polonius 
to  Laertes  in  Hamlet ;  the  other  an  ode  which  longs  for  peace, 
and  which  is  paralleled  by  the  famous  strophe  from  the  Cres- 
p/wntcs,  which  has  been  so  well  rendered  by  Mr.  Browning 
(Aristophanes'  Apology,  p.  179).  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  most 
of  the  philosophical  fragments  are  quoted  as  the  poet's  own 
sentiments,  and  this  is  specially  mentioned  by  rhetoricians 
and  scholiasts,1  some  of  whom  even  call  his  choruses  para- 
bases,  or  open  addresses  to  the  audience,  and  others,  such  as 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  insist  that  the  person  of  the  poet 
and  that  of  his  characters  are  throughout  blended  and  con- 
fused.2 The  letters  attributed  to  Euripides,  and  first  published 
by  Aldus  in  his  collection  (ed.  1499),  were  apparently  com- 
posed by  some  Roman  sophist,  and  have  no  value,  even  in 
preserving  facts  then  current  about  the  poet's  life,  which  might 
since  have  been  lost.  They  have  been  critically  sifted  by 
Bentley. 

§  222.  The  external  changes  introduced  into  tragedy  by 
Euripides  were  not  very  great.  He  seems  to  have  adhered  to 
Sophocles'  example  in  contending  with  separate  plays,  though 
he  represented  tetralogies  together — that  is  to  say,  we  have  no 
clear  evidence  that  there  was  any  connection  in  subject  between 
the  plays  which  were  produced  together,  as,  for  example,  the 
Baccha  and  Iphigenia  in  Aulis.  But  he  adopted  a  distinct 
method,  which  Sophocles  imitated  in  his  Ajax  and  Philoctetes — 
of  curtailing  the  opening  and  close  of  his  plays,  in  order  to  ex- 
pand more  fully  the  affecting  or  striking  scenes  in  the  body  of 
the  play.  This  was  attained,  first  by  the  prologue,  often  spoken 

1  Cf.  the  frags,  of  the  Danae. 

2  Cf.  the  passage  cited  on  the  Mdanippe  (T\  ao$i\)  in  DindorPs  frags. 


382  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XVII. 

by  a  god,  or  other  personage  not  prominent  in  the  real  play, 
who  set  forth  the  general  scope  and  plot  of  the  piece,  and  told 
the  audience  what  they  might  expect — a  matter  of  great  necessity 
in  such  a  play  as  the  Helena,  or  Iphigenia  in  Tauris,  where 
either  the  legend,  or  the  handling  of  the  legend,  was  strange, 
and  not  familiar  to  the  public  Secondly,  the  deus  ex  machina, 
who  appeared  at  the  end,  loosed  the  knot,  or  reconciled  the 
conflict  of  the  actors.  There  is  evidence  that  the  prologues 
were  much  tampered  with  by  the  actors,  and  some  are  even 
altogether  spurious.  In  written  copies  of  the  plays  these  pro- 
logues may  have  originally  served  as  arguments,  but  for  stage 
purposes,  their  recital  by  some  indifferent  actor  was  (I  fancy) 
intended  to  fill  up  the  time  while  the  Athenian  audience 
were  bustling  in  and  taking  their  seats.  The  appearance  of 
a  god  at  the  end  was  likewise  a  sign  that  the  play  was  over, 
for  it  was  always  plain  what  he  would  say,  and  the  last  words 
of  the  chorus  were  even  the  same  in  several  of  the  plays,  being 
evidently  not  heard  in  the  noise  of  the  general  rising  of  the 
crowd. 

It  was  the  fashion  of  the  scholiasts  to  follow  Aristophanes 
in  censuring  the  poet  for  introducing  certain  novelties  in  music 
and  in  metres.  But  we  cannot  now  appreciate  even  the  points 
urged  as  to  the  latter,  nor  do  I  think  that  the  modern  critics 
who  follow  the  same  line  of  censure  have  at  all  proved  their 
case  by  argument.  I  would  rather  point  to  at  least  one  very 
interesting  metrical  novelty  whereby  the  poet  admirably  ex- 
pressed the  contrast  of  calmness  and  excitement  in  a  dialogue. 
This  was  the  interchange  of  iambics  with  resolved  dochmiacs, 
which  we  find  in  several  fine  scenes,  such  as  that  of  Admetus 
with  his  wife  (Ale.  243,  sq.),  of  Phaedra  with  the  chorus  (Hipp. 
571,  sq.),  and  of  Amphitryon  with  Theseus  (Here.  Fur.  1178, 
sq.).  The  modern  reader  can  here  easily  feel  the  appropriate- 
ness of  a  remarkable  innovation. 

§  223.  As  to  the  general  complexion  of  his  plays,  the 
critics  note  that  the  chorus  declines  in  importance,  that  it 
does  not  interfere  in  the  action  of  the  play,  except  as  a  con- 
fidant or  accomplice,  and  that  its  odes  are  often  irrelevant 
or  personal  expressions  of  the  poet's  feelings.  These  state- 


CH.  xvii.        CHARACTERS  IN  EURIPIDES.  383 

ments  are  to  be  qualified  in  two  directions  :  in  the  first 
place,  we  find  the  decay  of  importance  and  occasional  irrele- 
vance of  the  chorus  manifestly  in  Sophocles,  so  that  he  must 
either  have  begun,  or  countenanced  by  his  practice,  the  change. 
Secondly,  it  is  false  that  Euripides  did  not  introduce  an  active 
chorus,  and  one  of  great  importance,  in  his  plays,  for  we 
have  before  us  the  Supplices,  the  Troades,  and  the  Baccha, 
rightly  called  after  the  most  important  role.  It  is  further- 
more asserted  that  he  invented  the  tragedies  of  intrigue  or  of 
plot,  where  curiosity  as  regards  the  result  replaces  strong 
emotions  as  regards  the  characters  and  sentiments  expressed. 
This  again  is  only  true  with  limitations.  For  there  are  three 
different  interests  which  may  predominate  in  a  tragedy,  and  ac- 
cordingly we  may  classify  them  as  tragedies  of  character,  like 
the  Medea,  as  tragedies  of  plot,  like  the  Ion,  and  as  tragedies 
of  situation,  like  the  Troades,  in  which  there  is  a  mere  series  ol 
affecting  tableaux,  or  episodes.  But  evidently  all  elements 
must  co-exist,  and  the  fact  that  Euripides  does  complicate 
his  plot,  and  excite  an  intellectual  interest  in  the  solving  of  it, 
does  not  prevent  these  very  plays  from  being  most  thoroughly 
plays  of  character  also.  There  is  no  finer  character-drawing 
than  that  of  Ion  and  the  Tauric  Iphigenia,  and  yet  these  cha- 
racters take  part  in  subtle  and  interesting  plots.  It  is  there- 
fore distinctly  to  be  understood  that  the  prominence  of  plot  in 
some  of  Euripides'  plays  does  not  exclude  either  character- 
drawing,  or  the  dwelling  upon  affecting  situations — this  latter  a 
very  usual  feature  in  the  poet,  and  one  in  which  he  may  be 
said  to  have  reverted  to  the  simple  successions  of  scenes  in 
the  earliest  tragedy. 

§  224.  But  there  is  this  important  point  in  Euripides'  charac- 
ter-drawing, that  except  in  the  Medea,  he  does  not  concentrate 
the  whole  interest  on  a  single  person,  but  divides  it,  so  that 
many  of  his  strongest  and  most  beautiful  creations  appear  only 
during  part  of  a  play.  Thus  Hippolytus  and  Phaedra  are  each 
splendidly  drawn,  but  of  equal  importance  in  their  play;  so  are 
Alcestis  and  Heracles,  Ion  and  Creusa,  Iphigenia,  Agamem- 
non and  Achilles.  This  subdivision  of  interest  makes  his 
plays  far  more  attractive  and  various,  but  naturally  fails  in  im- 


384  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE.  CH.  xvn. 

pressing  upon  the  world  great  single  figures,  such  as  Ajax, 
Antigone,  or,  in  our  present  poet,  Medea.  Again,  it  is  very 
remarkable  that  Euripides  seems  to  have  disliked,  or  to  have 
been  unable,  to  draw  strong  or  splendid  male  characters.  Al- 
most all  his  kings  and  heroes  are  either  colourless,  or  weak  and 
vacillating,  or  positively  mean  and  wicked.  This  may  be  the 
misfortune  of  our  extant  selection  of  plays,  for  the  Odysseus  of 
his  Philoctetes  seems  to  have  been  an  ideal  Periclean  Athenian. 
But  in  the  plays  we  have,  the  most  attractive  men  are  Ion  and 
Hippolytus,  in  both  of  whom  the  characteristics  of  virgin 
youth,  freshness,  and  purity  are  the  leading  features — a  type 
not  elsewhere  met  in  extant  tragedies,  but  very  prominent  in 
the  dialogues  of  Plato.  On  the  other  hand,  no  other  poet  has 
treated  female  passion,  and  female  self-sacrifice,  with  such  re- 
markable power  and  variety. l  We  have  remaining  two  types  oi 
passion  in  Phaedra  and  in  Medea— one  of  the  passion  of  Love, 
the  other  of  the  passion  of  Revenge,  and  we  know  that  in  other 
plays  he  made  erring  women  his  leading  characters.  But  when 
these  characters  are  assumed  mischievously  by  Aristophanes, 
stupidly  by  the  old  scholiasts,  servilely  by  modern  critics,  to 
afford  evidence  that  the  poet  hated  women,  and  loved  to  traduce 
them  upon  his  stage,  we  wonder  how  all  his  splendid  heroines 
have  been  forgotten,  and  his  declarations  of  the  blessings  of 
home,  of  the  comforts  of  a  good  wife,  of  the  surpassing  love  of 
a  mother,  passed  by  in  silence.  His  fragments  abound  with 
these  things,  just  as  they  do  with  railings  against  women,  both 
doubtless  spoken  in  character.  But  it  is  indeed  strange  criti- 
cism to  adopt  the  one  as  evidence  of  the  poet's  mind,  and  to 
reject  the  other. 

1  Mr.  Hutton,  in  his  delightful  Life  of  Scott,  contrasts  (p.  107)  the  genius 
of  Scott,  who  failed  in  drawing  heroines,  with  that  of  Goethe,  who  was  un- 
successful with  his  men,  but  unmatched  in  his  drawing  of  female  character. 
Some  such  natural  contrast  seems  to  have  existed  between  Sophocles  and 
Euripides,  and  is  indeed  implied  in  the  scandalous  anecdotes  about  them, 
which  intimate  that  Sophocles  was  too  purely  an  Athenian  to  share  Euri- 
pides' love  of  women.  Sophocles  had  an  opportunity  of  drawing  the 
purity  and  freshness  of  youth,  which  was  so  interesting  to  the  Greeks,  in 
his  Neoptolemus  (Philoctetes}.  Yet  this  character  appears  to  me  vrry 
inferior  to  either  Ion  or  Hippolytus. 


CH.XVII.  LESSER  CHARACTERS,  385 

There  are,  moreover,  in  the  extant  plays,  four  heroines  who 
face  death  with  splendid  calmness  and  courage — Alcestis, 
Macaria,  Iphigenia,  Polyxena — and  all  with  subtle  differences 
of  situation,  which  show  how  deeply  he  studied  this  phase 
of  human  greatness.  Alcestis  is  a  happy  wife  and  mother, 
in  the  heyday  of  prosperity,  and  she  gives  up  her  life  from  a 
sense  of  duty  for  an  amiable  but  worthless  husband.  Macaria, 
in  exile  and  in  affliction,  seizes  the  offer  to  resign  her  life,  and 
scorns  even  the  chance  of  the  lot,  to  secure  for  her  helpless 
brothers  and  sisters  the  happiness  which  she  has  been  denied. 
And  so  of  the  rest,  but  I  pass  them  by  rather  than  treat  them 
with  unjust  brevity.1  Enough  has  been  here  said  to  show 
that,  instead  of  being  a  bitter  libeller  of  the  sex,  he  was  rather 
a  philosophic  promoter  of  the  rights  of  woman,  a  painter  of  her 
power  both  for  good  and  evil,  and  that  he  strove  along  with 
Socrates,  and  probably  the  advanced  party  at  Athens,  to  raise 
both  the  importance  and  the  social  condition  of  the  despised 
sex. 

§225.  He  seems  to  have  similarly  advocated  the  virtues 
and  the  merit  of  slaves,  who  act  important  parts  in  his  plays, 
and  speak  not  only  with  dignity,  but  at  times  with  philosophic 
depth.  Yet  while  he  thus  endeavoured  to  raise  the  neglected 
elements  of  society,  he  may  fairly  be  accused  of  having  lowered 
the  gods  and  heroes,  both  in  character  and  diction,  to  the  level 
of  ordinary  men.  He  evidently  did  not  believe  in  the  tra- 
ditional splendour  of  these  people ;  he  ascribed  to  them  the 
weakness  and  the  meanness  of  ordinary  human  nature  ;  he  even 
made  them  speak  with  the  litigious  rhetoric  of  Attic  society. 
When  in  grief  and  misery,  they  fill  the  theatre  with  long 
monodies  of  wail  and  lamentation,  not  louder  or  more  intense 
than  those  of  the  Philoctetes  of  Sophocles,  but  without  the 
man's  iron  resolve.  Again,  in  calmer  moments  he  makes  them 
reflect  with  the  weariness  of  world-sickness,  often  in  the  tone  of 
advanced  scepticism,  sometimes  in  that  of  resignation  ;  he  also 
makes  his  chorus  turn  aside  from  the  immediate  subject  to 
speculate  on  the  system  of  the  world,  and  the  hopes  and  dis- 

1  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  chapter  of  my  phonograph  on  Euripides 
for  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  interesting  question. 
VOL.  I.  — 17 


386  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvii. 

appointments  of  mankind.  When  we  note  these  large  and 
deep  features  in  his  tragedies,  when  we  see  the  physical  philo- 
sophy of  Anaxagoras,  the  metaphysic  of  Heracleitus,  the 
scepticism  of  Protagoras  produced  upon  his  stage,  when  we 
see  him  abandoning  strictness  of  plot,  and  even  propriety  of 
character,  to  insist  upon  these  meditations  of  the  study,  we 
fancy  him  a  philosopher  like  Plato,  who  desired  to  teach  the 
current  views,  and  the  current  conflicts  of  thought,  under  the 
guise  of  dramatic  dialogue,  and  who  accordingly  fears  not  to 
preach  all  the  inconsistencies  of  human  opinion  in  the  mouths 
of  opposing  characters.  A  picture  of  every  sort  of  speculation, 
of  every  sort  of  generalization  from  experience,  can  be  gathered 
from  his  plays,  and  we  obtain  from  them  a  wonderful  image 
of  that  great  seething  chaos  of  hope  and  despair,  of  faith  and 
doubt,  of  duty  and  passion,  of  impatience  and  of  resignation, 
which  is  the  philosophy  of  every  active  and  thoughtful  society. 
We  can  imagine  the  silent  and  solitary  recluse  despising  his 
public,  writing  not  for  the  many  of  his  own  day,  but  for  the 
many  of  future  generations,  and  careless  how  often  the  critics 
might  censure  him  for  violating  dramatic  dignity,  and  the 
judges  postpone  him  to  inferior  rivals.  And  he  may  well  have 
smiled  at  his  five  victories  as  the  reward  for  his  great  and 
earnest  work. 

§  226.  But  this  natural  estimate  is  contradicted  by  the  per- 
petual notes  of  the  scholiasts,  who  assert  that  Euripides  was 
altogether  a  stage  poet,  and  sacrificed  everything  to  momentary 
effect.  They  speak  of  his  plays  as  immoral,  as  ill-constructed, 
but  as  of  great  dramatic  brilliancy.  I  confess  I  am  slow  to 
attach  any  weight  to  the  critics  who  censure  the  tears  of  Medea 
and  Iphigenia  as  blunders  in  character-drawing.1  But  there 
are  independent  signs  that  what  they  say  has  a  real  foundation, 
and  that  Euripides  was  too  thoroughly  the  child  of  his  age  to 
soar  above  the  opinions  of  a  public  which  he  may  often,  and  in 
deeper  moments,  have  despised.  Thus  we  hear  of  his  re-cast- 
ing his  Hippolytus,  so  as  to  meet  objections  ;  we  find  him  in- 
dulging in  long  monodies  which  can  hardly  have  been  intended 
for  more  than  an  immediate  musical  effect ;  above  all,  we  find 

1  Cf.  tte  argument  to  the  Medea  and  Aristotle's  Poetic,  cap.  xv. 


CH.  xvn.        FORTUNES  OF  HIS   WORKS.  387 

him  writing  patriotic  plays,  with  extreme  travesties  of  the  enemy 
of  the  day,  and  with  fulsome  praises  of  Athens,  which  are  far 
below  the  level  of  the  '  philosopher  of  the  stage.'  We  find  him 
also  adopting  a  combination  of  two  successive  plots,  so  as  to 
gather  into  one  the  pathetic  scenes  of  separate  stories,  at  the 
expense  of  dramatic  unity.  These  things  show  that  if  he  really 
adopted  the  stage  as  a  means  of  conveying  the  newer  light,  it 
became  to  him  an  end,  which  he  strove  to  perfect  in  his  own 
way,  and  without  surrendering  his  philosophy. 

He  felt  himself,  as  Aristophanes  tells  us,  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  ^Eschylus,  whom  he  criticises  more  than  once. 
There  are  not  wanting  cases  where  he  seeks  to  correct 
Sophocles  also,  but  nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the 
small  number  of  allusions  or  collisions  between  rivals  on  the 
same  stage,  and  often  in  the  same  subjects.  Yet  they  could 
not  but  profit  by  the  conflict.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that 
as  Euripides  was  the  poet  of  the  younger  generation,  and  of 
the  changing  state,  he  acted  more  strongly  on  Sophocles  than 
Sophocles  did  in  return,  and  though  we  may  see  in  the  Bacchce 
much  of  the  religious  resignation  of  Sophocles,  we  see  in  the 
Philoctetes  a  great  deal  of  the  economy  and  of  the  stage  practice 
of  Euripides. 

The  next  generation,  while  leaving  the  older  poet  all  his 
glories,  declared  decidedly  for  Euripides  ;  the  poets  of  society 
embraced  him  as  their  forerunner  and  their  model ;  philoso- 
phers, orators,  moralists — all  united  in  extolling  him  to  the  skies. 
Thus  the  poet  who  was  charged  with  writing  for  the  vulgar, 
with  pandering  to  the  lowest  tastes  of  the  day,  with  abandoning 
the  ideal  and  the  eternal  for  the  passions  and  interests  of  the 
moment— this  is  the  very  man  who  became  essentially  the 
poet,  not  of  his  own,  but  of  later  ages.  He  was  doubtless,  as 
I  have  already  said,  an  inferior  artist  to  Sophocles  ;  he  was 
certainly  a  greater  genius,  and  a  far  more  suggestive  thinker. ' 

§  227.  The  old  critics  paid  much  attention  to  this  author,  but 
are  unfortunately  not  often  cited.  Dicsearchus  is  the  earliest 

1  An  immense  number  of  monographs  on  special  points  in  the  poet's 
diction,  economy,  style,  and  temper  are  enumerated  by  Bernhardy  and  by 
Nicolai,  LG.  I.  i.  pp.  20 1 -2. 


388  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xvn. 

mentioned,  especially  in  the  Arguments,  then  Aristophanes  of 
Byzantium,  and  his  pupil  Callistratus,  as  well  as  other  Alexan- 
drians, and  Crates,  but  Aristarchus  is  only  mentioned  once  in 
a  note  on  the  Rhesus.  Didymus  is  the  most  important,  and 
most  cited,  and  a  commentary  by  Dionysius,  added  to  his  notes. 
The  present  collection  of  scholia,  though  it  must  have  then 
existed,  was  unknown  to  Suidas.  They  were  first  edited  on 
the  seven  popular  plays,  by  Arsenius  (Venice,  1534),  and  often 
since.  Those  on  the  Rhesus  and  Troades  were  first  given  from 
the  Vatican  MS.  (909),  in  the  Glasgow  edition  of  1821.  This 
copy  also  supplies  fuller  notes  on  other  plays,  all  of  which  have 
been  carefully  edited  by  W.  Dindorf  in  his  Scholia  Graca  in 
Eurip.  (Oxon.  1863),  with  a  good  preface.  There  are  only 
full  notes  on  nine  plays,  viz.  Hecuba,  Orestes,  Phanissce,  Medea, 
Hippolytus,  Alcestis,  Andromache,  Troades,  and  Rhesus.  On  the 
rest  there  is  hardly  anything,  about  a  dozen  notes  each  on  the 
Ion,  Helena,  Hercules  Furens  and  Electra ;  on  the  others  even 
less.  The  history  of  the  influence  of  his  plays  on  the  Roman 
and  modern  drama  is  very  curious,  but  I  must  refer  the  reader 
for  this  and  other  details  to  my  larger  monograph  on  the  poet.1 
§  228.  Bibliographical.  I  proceed  to  notice  the  principal 
MSS.  and  editions.  The  extant  MSS.  have  been  carefully 
classified  by  Elmsley  (Pref.  to  Medea  and  Bacch.\  by  Dindorf, 
and  by  Kirchhoff  in  the  preface  to  his  Medea.  None  of  them 
contains  all  the  plays.  The  older  selection  contains  the  nine 
plays  of  the  Vatican  MS.  just  mentioned,  but  of  these  the  first 
five  are  in  a  Venice  MS.,  which  is  the  oldest  and  best,  and 
six  in  a  Paris  MS.  (A,  2712).  We  accordingly  have  these  plays 
better  preserved,  and  with  scholia.  The  rest  are  extant  in 
two  fourteenth  century  MSS.,  the  Laurentian  C  (plut.  32,  2, 
at  Florence),  which  contains  all  the  plays  but  \h<  ..Troades  and 
a  portion  of  the  Bacchcz,  and  the  Palatine  (287),  at  the  Vatican 
Library,  which  contains  seven  of  the  latter  section,  except  the 
end  of  HeracktdcE.  Thus  there  are  three  plays,  the  Hercules 
Furens,  the  Helena,  and  the  Electra,  which  depend  upon  the 
Florentine  C  alone,  which  has  only  been  of  late  collated  >nce 

1  Euripides,  in  Mr.  Green's  series  of  classical  writers.     (Macmillan, 
1879.) 


CH  xvn.  EDITIONS.  389 

(by  de  Furia)  for  the  edition  of  Matthias.  An  examination  of 
this  codex  on  the  Helena  and  Hercules  Furens  proved  to  me 
that  a  good  deal  of  help  might  still  be  derived  from  another 
and  more  careful  collation.  The  same  result  appears  from  the 
recent  collation  of  the  Electra  by  Heyse.1  More  recent  copies 
need  not  here  be  mentioned.  Most  critics  are  now  agreed  that 
all  these  texts  are  full  of  interpolations,  arising  from  repeti- 
tions, school  reading,  and  from  additions  to  the  choral  odes  by 
grammarians.  As  to  editions,  four  plays  (Medea,  Hippolytus, 
Alcestis,  Andromache)  were  first  edited  by  J.  Lascaris,  in  capitals, 
at  Florence,  about  1496 — a  rare  and  undated  book.  The 
proper  princeps  edition  is  that  of  Aldus  (1503),  containing 
eighteen  plays,  the  Electra  not  appearing  till  1545  (Victorius, 
Rome).  This  edition  is  based  upon  good  MSS.,  and  its  value 
is  much  greater  than  those  which  succeeded  it,  and  which  I 
therefore  pass  over  till  the  studies  of  Valckenaer,  whose 
Diatribe  on  the  fragments  marks  an  epoch.  I  have  already 
noted  all  the  good  special  editions  of  each  play  under  its  head- 
ing. Of  late  critical  editions  we  may  mention  that  of  Matthise 
(1829-39),  of  Fix,  in  Didot's  series  (1843),  °f  A.  Kirchhoff 
(1868),  of  Nauck  (Teubner),  of  H.  Weil  (sept  trage'dies,  Paris, 
1868),  and  of  Mr.  Paley,  who  has  given  us  a  text  and  commen- 
tary in  three  volumes  (1860).  Besides  the  versions  of  single 
plays  already  mentioned,  there  are  translations  of  the  whole 
works  into  German  by  Bothe,  Donner,  Hartung,  Fritze,  and 
Kock,  into  French  by  PreVost  and  Brumoy,  into  Italian  by 
Carmelli  (Padua,  1743),  into  English  by  Potter  (reproduced  in 
Valpy's  classics,  1821),  and  by  Woodhull  (1782,  four  volumes). 
Carmelli  and  Woodhull  not  only  give  all  the  plays,  with  many 
good  notes,  but  all  the  fragments  then  collected  by  Barnes  and 
Musgrave,  with  an  index  of  names  and  even  of  moral  senti- 
ments. There  is  also  an  edition  of  four  select  tragedies  pro- 
duced anonymously  in  1780.  There  are  unfinished  lexicons 
of  Euripides'  diction  by  Faehse  and  Matthias. 

1  Cf.  Hermes,  vii.  252,  en. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE   LESSER  AND  THE  LATER  TRAGIC  POETS. 

§  229.  NOTHING  is  more  remarkable  than  the  deep  shade 
thrown  over  all  the  other  Greek  tragic  poets  by  the  splendour 
of  the  great  Triad  which  has  so  long  occupied  us.  It  may 
perhaps  not  excite  wonder  that  their  contemporaries  should  be 
forgotten,  but  we  are  surprised  that  of  their  successors  none 
should  have  stood  the  test  of  time,  or  reached  us  even  through 
the  medium  of  criticism.  Nevertheless,  of  the  vast  herd  of 
latter  tragedians  two  only,  and  two  of  the  earliest — Ion  and 
Agathon — can  be  called  living  figures  in  a  history  of  Greek 
literature.  And  these,  as  it  happens,  encountered  the  living 
splendour  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides.  Moreover,  our  scanty 
information  seems  to  have  omitted  some  of  the  most  popular 
of  the  later  playwrights,  for  of  the  700  tragedies  which  are 
attributed  to  them  in  the  notes  of  Suidas  and  elsewhere,  we  can 
only  find  fifteen  victorious  pieces.  Who  then  won  the  prizes  ? 
or  was  the  taste  of  the  Athenian  ochlocracy  so  conservative, 
that  they  persisted  in  reserving  all  the  honours  for  reproductions 
of  the  old  masterpieces?  If  this  were  so,  how  comes  it  that 
the  writing  of  new  and  unsuccessful  tragedies  became  so 
dominant  a  fashion?  And  yet  even  the  Poetic  of  Aristotle, 
which  treats  mainly  of  the  laws  of  tragic  poetry,  hardly  men- 
tions any  of  them,  and  then  almost  always  by  way  of  censure. 
This  much  is  therefore  certain,  that  while  comedy  was  making 
new  developments,  and  affording  a  field  for  real  genius  and 
for  real  art,  tragedy,  though  for  a  time  maintaining  its  import- 
ance and  even  its  popularity,  had  attained  its  zenith,  and  its 
later  annals  are  but  a  history  of  decay.  Of  the  older  poets, 
who  were  contemporary  with  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  we 


CH.  xvur.  ION  OF  CHIOS.  391 

hear  in  Suidas  of  Aristarchus  of  Tegea,  the  author  of  TOO  plays, 
and  only  twice  a  victor,  from  whom  Ennius  seems  to  have 
borrowed  his  Achilles;  also  of  Achaus  of  Eretria,  who  con- 
tended with  Euripides  in  Ol.  83,  who  only  won  once,  though 
the  author  of  forty-four.  The  scholia  to  the  Medea  of  Euripides 
cite  Neophron  or  Neophon  as  the  author  of  the  poet's  model, 
and  quote  from  him  two  good  fragments,  which,  when  supple- 
mented by  the  soliloquy  of  his  Priam  from  Stobseus,  seem  to 
indicate  some  talent.  But  these  scanty  hints,  and  the  notice 
of  Suidas  that  he  first  brought  on  the  stage  tutor-slaves  and 
the  torturing  of  domestics — whatever  that  may  mean — are  all 
that  remains  to  us  of  his  120  dramas. 

§  230.  But  we  hear  a  great  deal  more  of  Ion  of  Chios,  who 
was  in  many  respects  a  remarkable  figure.  As  he  told  of  his 
having  when  a  youth  met  Kimon  in  society  at  Athens,  his 
birth  must  fall  about  Ol.  74 ;  his  death  is  alluded  to  by 
Aristophanes 1  as  recent,  I  suppose,  and  therefore  shortly 
before  Ol.  89,  3.  Though  in  character  as  well  as  in  birth 
a  pure  Ionian,  he  seems  to  have  lived  much  at  Athens,  and 
from  a  drinking  song  quoted  in  Athenaeus  appears  also  well 
acquainted  with  Spartan  traditions  and  cults.  But  these  could 
have  been  learned  from  Kimon's  aristocratical  society  at 
Athens,  as  they  always  affected  Spartan  style,  in  the  same  man- 
ner that  foreign  nobles  of  sundry  nations  mimic  Englishmen. 
Ion  seems  to  have  met  ^Eschylus,  and  possibly  Sophocles,  at 
the  opening  of  his  career,  and  to  have  been  a  much-travelled 
and  social  person,  of  large  experience,  agreeable  manners,  and 
ample  fortune.  Perhaps  he  is  the  earliest  example  of  a  literary 
dilettante,  who  employed  his  leisure  in  essays  of  various  sorts 
of  writing.  He  composed  elegies,2  melic  poems,  both  dithyrambs 
and  hymns,  especially  a  hymn  to  Opportunity  (u/iroc  Kcupov),  epi- 
grams, tragedies,  and  prose  works  in  Ionic  dialect — the  latter 
either  on  the  antiquities  of  Chios,  or  in  the  form  of  memoirs 
(called  also  rVtSq/u'eu  and  ffweKfy/jiTiriKofy.  These  latter,  which 
must  have  been  a  novel  form  in  literature,  are  often  cited  by 

1  Pax,  835,  with  a  good  scholion. 

2  Cf.  above,  p.  192. 


392        HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xvill. 

Plutarch  and  Athenaeus  as  valuable  historical  sources,  and  were 
discussed  in  a  special  work  on  Ion  by  Baton  of  Sinope. 

We  are  here,  however,  concerned  with  his  tragedies,  of 
which  the  number  is  variously  stated  from  twelve  to  forty. 
Perhaps  the  lesser  number  refers  to  trilogies.  He  first  con- 
tended in  Ol.  82,  was  unsuccessful  against  Euripides  in  87,  4, 
but  when  afterwards  victorious,  sent  the  Athenians  a  present 
of  Chian  wine.  We  have  ten  titles,  some  of  them  very  curious, 
e.g.  the  Great  Drama  (Me'ya  fy>a//a).  His  satyrical  play,  the 
Omphale,  was  very  popular.  None  of  the  fragments  are 
sufficient  to  give  an  idea  of  the  plot,  but  their  style  is  good, 
and  the  expression  easy  and  elegant 

Achczus  of  Eretria  flourished  between  Ol.  74  and  83,  but 
only  gained  a  single  prize  out  of  forty-four  dramas.  He  is 
once  praised  as  second  only  to  ^Eschylus  in  satyrical  drama. 
Athenaeus  speaks  of  him  as  smooth  in  style,  but  at  times  dark 
and  enigmatical.  His  scanty  fragments  afford  us  no  means  of 
correcting  this  judgment 

§  231.  We  may  pass  next  to  a  poet  whose  figure  comes 
before  us  with  peculiar  clearness  in  the  pictures  of  Plato  and 
Aristophanes.  Whether  their  portraits  are  faithful  is  not  easy 
to  say,  but  it  is  not  likely  that  they  were  far  from  the  truth, 
especially  as  they  are  not  inconsistent,  though  very  dissimilar 
in  many  respects. 

In  the  opening  of  the  Thesmopfwriazusce  AGATHON  (son  of 
Tisamenus)  is  appealed  to  as  an  effeminate  and  luxurious  man 
whose  soft  and  sensuous  poetry  was  the  natural  outcome  of  his 
nature.  A  specimen — of  course  a  parody — is  given  of  an  alter- 
nate hymn  between  the  poet  and  his  chorus,  which  is  not  with- 
out grace  and  beauty.  But  this  satirical  picture  is  much 
modified  by  the  hearty  friendliness  of  the  allusion  in  the  Frogs, 
where  Dionysus,  in  reply  to  Heracles,  who  asks  about  Agathon 
next  after  Sophocles,  says  '  he  is  gone  and  has  left  me,  a  good 
poet  and  a  deep  regret  to  his  friends.  H.  Whither  has  the 
poor  fellow  gone  ?  D.  To  the  feast  of  the  blessed.'  The  hos- 
pitable and  social  side  of  the  man  is  not  less  prominent  in 
Plato's  Symposium,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  his  house,  where 
he  acts  the  part  of  a  most  gentlemanly  and  aristocratic  host, 


CH.  xvni.  AGATHON.  393 

and  makes  a  remarkable  speech  on  the  nature  of  Love,  which 
may  possibly  be  drawn  from  his  writings,  but  of  this  no  evidence 
remains  to  us.  There  is  indeed  a  corrupt  passage  in  Diony- 
sius,  which  makes  him,  with  Licymnius,  a  pupil  of  Gorgias, 
and  this  hint  has  prompted  Blass  l  to  analyse  with  care  his 
speech  in  the  Symposium,  and  his  language  in  the  parody 
of  Aristophanes,  to  detect  Gorgian  features.  There  seems  to 
be  strong  evidence  in  the  speech,  which  is  evidently  a  dramatic 
imitation  of  a  peculiar  style,  that  Agathon  did  borrow  its 
complexion  from  his  friend  Gorgias.  There  is  the  same  atten- 
tion to  a  fixed  and  obvious  scheme,  the  same  love  of  playing 
upon  words,  and  seeking  alliterations.  As  these  features  recur 
in  the  odes  ascribed  to  him  by  Aristophanes,  it  is  probable 
that  his  style  was  really  formed  from  the  oratory  of  the  great 
Sicilian. 

Though  he  is  proved  by  these  and  many  other  allusions 
and  anecdotes  to  have  been  a  prominent  figure  in  Attic  soci- 
ety, we  have  very  few  facts  transmitted  about  his  life.  Born 
about  Ol.  83,  he  first  gained  a  prize  in  Ol.  90,  4,  and  is  men- 
tioned as  having  praised  Antiphon's  great  defence  of  him- 
self to  the  orator,  who  felt  consoled  in  his  condemnation  by 
the  approval  of  one  competent  judge  among  the  ignorant 
public.  He  left  Athens  before  the  end  of  the  93rd  Ol.  for  the 
Macedonian  court,  where  the  good  living  and  absence  of  sharp 
criticism  probably  suited  his  easy-going  and  perhaps  indolent 
genius  ;  and  there  he  died  in  the  prime  of  life,  before  405  B.C. 
There  remain  to  us  the  titles  of  only  seven  of  his  tragedies, 
Thyestes,  the  Destruction  of  Ilium — in  which  alone,  says  the 
Poetic  of  Aristotle,  he  failed — Alcmceon,  Aerope,  Thyestes,  and 
lastly  the  Flower  (ciyfloe),  so  strange  a  title  that  some  critics 
consider  it  a  false  reading  for  some  proper  name.  But  as  we 
are  told 2  that  both  the  characters  and  the  plot  were  in  this 
play  invented,  the  curious  title  is  not  improbable ;  and  we 
have  here  an  original  attempt  at  a  tragedy  departing  from  the 
received  myths,  consequently  from  all  religious  basis,  and  a 
notable  advance  in  the  history  of  the  drama.  We  learn  from 
the  Poetic  also,  to  me  a  suspicious  source,  that  he  was  the  ori- 
1  Attische  Beredtsamkeit,  \.  76.  2  Poet,  9. 

17* 


394       HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  xvur. 

ginator  of  the  habit  of  composing  choral  odes  loosely  or  not  at 
all  connected  with  a  plot — an  innovation  commonly  attributed 
to  Euripides.  The  few  extant  fragments,  as  well  as  the  speech 
in  Plato,  point  to  great  neatness  of  style,  and  an  epigrammatic 
turn,  which  the  Attic  writers  called  KO/JL^OTTJC  or  rhetorical 
finish.  This  quality  makes  him  a  favourite  source  of  quotation 
with  Aristotle.  We  find,  therefore,  in  Agathon  an  independent 
and  talented  artist,  working  on  the  same  lines,  and  in  the  same 
direction,  as  Euripides,  but  without  his  industry  or  philosophic 
seriousness. 

§  232.  The  case  of  CRITIAS  is  more  difficult  to  decide. 
One  play,  the  Sisyphus,  often  ascribed  to  Euripides,  seems 
to  have  been  composed  by  Critias,  but  the  frank  atheism 
expressed  in  the  extant  fragment  makes  us  think  he  did  not 
mean  it  for  public  performance.  Another,  the  Pririthous,  is 
doubtfully  ascribed  to  him  by  Athenaeus,  but  elsewhere  called 
Euripidean.  Thus  the  tragedy  of  Critias  seems  to  have  been 
distinctly  intended  to  convey  sceptical  views  in  theology  and 
in  natural  philosophy,  outdoing  the  more  artistic  and  reticent 
character  of  Euripides's  teaching.1 

During  the  same  period  the  families  of  the  great  tragic 
poets  were  either  reproducing,  or  composing,  with  some  success. 
Two  sons  of  ^Eschylus  were  tragic  poets,  one  of  whom,  Eu- 
phorion,  succeeded  four  times  with  unpublished  plays  of  his 
father,  and  defeated  Euripides  in  Ol.  87,  4.  He  also  composed 
original  plays.  lophon,  son  of  Sophocles,  is  spoken  of  as 
gaining  victories,  and  also  as  a  bad  poet.  But  the  grandson, 
the  younger  Sophocles,  who  produced  the  (Edipiis  Coloneus, 
was  of  more  repute,  and  often  declared  victor.  The  younger 
Euripides,  nephew  of  the  great  poet,  is  not  prominent  There 
appear  also  among  the  descendants  of  ^Eschylus  his  nephew 
Philocles,  an  ugly  and  mean-looking  man,  who  defeated 
Sophocles'  (Ediptis  Rex ;  and  then  a  series  of  grandsons  and 
nephews — Morsimus,  Melanthius,  Astydamas,  and  a  younger 
Philocles.  These  men  are  chiefly  known  by  the  ridicule  of  the 
comic  poets,  which  has  immortalised  a  host  of  obscurities. 

1  His  prose  works  will  be  noticed  hereafter. 


CH.  xvm.  OBSCURE  TRAGIC  POETS.  395 

The  famous  passage  in  the  Frogs '  gives  us  Aristophanes'  judg- 
ment on  this  herd  of  tragic  poetasters,  whose  names  are  not 
worth  enumeration  here.  I  will  only  observe  that  the  German 
critics  have  adopted  far  too  literally  the  scorn  and  ridicule  of 
Aristophanes,  who  was  often  an  unfair  critic,  and  probably 
gave  rein  to  private  spite  and  party  feeling  in  many  of  his  judg- 
ments. If  we  had  only  his  ridicule  of  Agathon  in  the  Thesmopho- 
riazusce  preserved,  and  had  lost  the  Frogs  and  Plato's  Sympo- 
sium, I  have  no  doubt  Agathon  would  occupy  a  very  different 
place  in  the  judgment  of  learned  philologists.  Of  the  lesser 
poets  Meletus  has  gained  notoriety  by  his  attack  on  Socrates  ; 
Critias  by  his  political  activity,  and  his  elegies,  of  which  no 
mean  fragments  have  been  preserved  ;  there  was  also  Diony- 
sius  of  Syracuse,  whose  vanity  and  anxiety  to  succeed  in 
literature  were  of  old  much  ridiculed.  His  poems  were  recited 
with  great  pomp  at  Olympia  (98,  i),  and  received  with  jeering 
and  laughter.  He  really  studied,  and  had  his  works  revised 
and  criticised  by  Philoxenus  and  the  tragic  poet  Antiphon  ; 
it  is  probably  an  Attic  joke  that  he  died  of  joy  at  a  victory 
gained  in  the  Athenian  Lenaea  (01.  103,  i). 

1  W.  89,  sq.  :  HP.   OVKOVV  trep  tffr  tvravOa  /j.etpaKv\\ia 
TpayifSias  iroiovvra  TrAeiV  ^  /nvpia, 
'EliptiriSov  ir\fTv  ^  ffraStcf  \a\iffrepa  ; 
AI.  eiri(pv\\iSes  ravr'  fffrl  Kal  ffT(afj.v\fj.a.Ta, 
•)(e\it>6v(av  fj.ovtrf'ta,  \ai0rjral  rexfts, 
a  <ppov8a  OaTTOV,  fy  yJivov  j(opbv  Aa/Jj?) 
a7ra£  irpoffovp-fjiravTa  rfj  rpaycfSia.. 
•y&viiiov  Se  iroir]T^i>  tu>  011%  evpots  eri 
£t)T<av  &v,  Scrns  py/J-a  yevvaiov  AaKOt. 
HP.   irias  y6i>ip.ov, 

AI.  w5i   J&VlfiOV,   OffTtS  0(?€7|€Ta. 

roiovTOvi  rt  TrapaKfKivSvvfv/j.evoi', 

al6fpa  Aibs  Scii/j.d.Tioi',  ^  xp6vov  ir65a, 

^  (ppfi'a  fjitv  OVK  (9e\ovcrai>  ofidtrai  icaff  ifpcav, 

yKlarrav  5'  (TriopK^ffaffav  iSiqrris  <ppfv6s. 

HP.  <re  8e  TOVT"  apeffKfi ;  AI.  yuaAAct  ir\tiv  v)  juai 

H?.   ^  /uV  K00a\d  y'  fffriv,  &s  Kal  ffol  S3Kf7. 

AI.   jit);  rbv  efj.bv  ofitfi  vovv '  fXeis  y&P  olicia.i'. 

HP.    Kal  /uV  arexvus  yf  ira/jLirovripa  (paiverai. 

AI,   Seiirvf'iv  ^6 


396        HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XVIII. 

The  later  no-dees  of  tragedy  are  not  clear  enough  for  any 
short  survey.  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  careful  discussion 
in  Welcker's  third  volume,  and  the  long  summary  in  Bernhardy. 
The  school  of  Isocrates  produced  one  man,  Theodectes,  rather 
a  rhetorician  than  a  tragic  poet,  who  was  honoured  with  the 
friendship  of  Alexander  and  Aristotle.  Then  follows  the  head 
of  the  dvayi'uoTtKoi,  Choeremon,  who  wrote  for  a  reading  public, 
and  altogether  in  that  rhetorical  style  which  infected  all  later 
tragedy  in  Greece,  in  Rome,  and  in  the  French  renaissance. 
The  Alexandrian  fagedians,  the  best  seven  of  whom  were  called 
the  Pleias,  and  who  were  thought  in  their  day  very  wonderful 
people,  do  not  concern  us  in  a  survey  of  Greek  classical 
literature. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE   ORIGIN    OF     COMEDY — THE   DORIC     SCHOOL,    EPICHARMUS, 
SOPHRON— THEOCRITUS  AND   HIS   SCHOOL. 

§  233.  '  COMEDY  did  not  attract  attention  from  the  begin- 
ning, because  it  was  not  a  serious  pursuit.  Thus  thearchon  did 
not  assign  a  chorus  to  the  comic  poets  till  late,  for  they  were 
(at  first)  volunteers  (edtXorrai,  apparently  a  technical  term). 
But  it  was  not  until  it  had  attained  some  fixity  of  form  that  its 
poets  are  recorded  as  such.  It  is  forgotten  who  fixed  its  cha- 
racters (masks)  or  style,  or  number  of  actors,  or  such  other 
details.'  This  is  the  statement  in  Aristotle's  Poetic,  from  which 
all  historians  of  ancient  comedy  now  start.  While  tragedy, 
being  distinctly  associated  with  religion,  soon  came  under  state 
protection,  comedy,  which  was  indeed  a  part  of  the  Dionysiac 
feast,  but  a  mere  relaxation  of  revelry,  was  allowed  to  take  care 
of  itself,  and  to  develop  as  best  it  could.  But  in  most  cases  it 
was  found  that  the  political  and  social  license  of  democracy 
was  favourable  to  its  claims,  and  its  political  capabilities  raised 
it  to  great  glory  in  the  old  Attic  school  of  Aristophanes.  This 
side  of  comedy  gave  rise  to  part  of  the  claim  justly  made  by 
the  Dorians,  that  they  had  originated  both  tragedy  and  comedy 
— a  claim  the  more  reasonable,  as  it  is  clear  that  the  Dorians 
were  the  originators,  and  the  lonians  the  perfecters,  of  many 
forms  of  literature.  '  Wherefore  (says  Aristotle)  the  Dorians 
lay  claim  to  both  tragedy  and  comedy,  to  comedy  the  people 
of  Megara,  both  those  of  this  (Nisaean)  Megara  because  of 
their  democracy,  and  those  of  Sicily  (on  account  of  Epichar- 
mus).  And  they  cite  the  terms  used  as  evidence.  For  the 
outlying  villages  which  the  Athenians  call  S/j^uoi  they  call 
as  comedians  were  so  called  not  from  joining  in  the 


39*  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XIX. 

(procession  of  revellers),  but  on  account  of  their  wandering 
through  the  villages,  because  they  were  held  in  no  repute 
in  the  city.'  This  derivation  of  K^^wlia  is  probably  the 
right  one,  and  does  not  conflict  with  the  term  rpvywtim,  the 
song  of  the  lees,  or  of  the  vintage  feast,  at  which  time  such 
diversions  have  been  common  with  all  southern  nations. 
Another  passage  in  the  Poetic  which  speaks  of  comedy  being 
originally  impromptu,  and  being  derived  from  the  phallic  pro- 
cessions, still  common  in  most  Greek  towns,  is  not  so  accu- 
rate, and  only  means  that  these  phallic  precessions  were  carried 
on  both  at  the  season,  and  in  the  frame  of  mind  which  suited 
the  old  rude  comedy.  The  phallic  feasts  of  the  Egyptians, 
described  by  Herodotus,1  show  this  combination  of  the 
worship  of  nature,  and  of  satirical  and  comic  personalities. 
But  there  is  no  evidence  that  these  precessions,  even  when 
they  gave  rise  to  special  hymns,  of  which  we  have  traces,  ever 
advanced  to  any  dramatic  form.  Of  course  this  account  of  the 
orig  n  of  comedy,  which  is  evidently  historical,  disposes  of  the 
remark  in  the  Poetic,  that  what  is  called  Homer's  Margites  was 
the  first  model  of  comedy,  as  the  Iliad  was  of  tragedy.  This 
poem  was  probably  the  earliest  attempt  at  drawing  a  genuine 
character  from  a  ridiculous  point  of  view ;  but  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  Thersites  of  the  Iliad  could  not  have  served  the 
purpose  just  as  well. 

It  results  from  the  obscure  origin  of  comedy  among  village 
people,  that  it  should  develop  itself  variously,  according  as 
the  same  seed  fell  upon  various  ground,  both  as  to  circum- 
stances and  as  to  the  special  genius  of  the  men  who  raised  it 
into  literature.  But  there  is  one  great  division  which  we  may 
separate  at  once,  and  relegate  to  after  discussion — I  mean  the 
Attic  comedy,  which,  though  apparently  imported  from  Megara, 
and  long  dormant,  in  due  time  developed  into  a  great  and 
fruitful  branch  of  Greek  poetry,  with  a  definite  progress  and  a 
'well-determined  history.  The  other  branch,  to  which  we  now 
turn,  is  rightly  called  the  Doric,  because  we  find  it  among  no 
other  Greeks  than  Dorians,  and  almost  everywhere  among 
them,  but  differing  so  widely  in  form,  tone  and  temper,  accord- 
1  ii.  58. 


CH.  xix.  SPARTAN  COMEDY.  399 

ing  to  its  age  and  home,  that  there  is  perhaps  no  name  of 
wider  and  more  various  acceptation.  But,  in  the  first  instance, 
the  reader  should  be  warned  against  taking  the  Spartans  of 
history  as  representatives  of  the  Dorian  type.  Whatever  they 
may  have  been  before  the  Ephors  reduced  them  to  a  camp  of 
ignorant  and  narrow-minded  soldiers,  under  what  is  called  the 
Lycurgean  discipline  —  this  much  is  certain,  that  all  other 
Dorians — Megarians,  Argives,  Italiots,  Sikeliots,  Rhodians — 
differed  widely  from  the  Spartan  type.  We  might  as  well  take 
the  Roman  type  as  representative  of  those  lively  volatile  Italic 
people,  out  of  which  they  rose  by  a  peculiar  history,  and 
peculiar  social  and  political  conditions. 

§  234.  (a)  The  Spartans  had  a  sort  or  comedy,  in  which 
players,  who  were  called  SeiKijAura/,  acted  in  pantomime  certain 
comic  parts,  apparently  of  both  special  adventures  (such  as 
those  of  a  thief)  and  of  characters  (such  as  that  of  a  foreign 
physician).  AekqXoi/  is  said  to  be  synonymous  with 
Apparently  those  who  represented  women  were  called 
\iKrai.  These  actors  were,  as  might  be  expected,  held  in 
contempt  by  the  Spartans,  and  were  always  either  perioeci  or 
helots.  Thus  a  reply  of  Agesilaus,  given  by  Plutarch,  ex- 
presses the  contempt  which  grave  persons  of  the  Periclean 
type  would  feel  for  a  'play-actor.'  (£)  The  efforts  of  the 
Megarians  are  more  important,1  though  hardly  less  obscure, 
inasmuch  as  through  Susarion  they  led  the  way  to  Attic, 
and  through  their  Sicilian  colony  to  the  highest  Sicilian, 
comedy.  The  violent  political  conflicts  in  which  the  citizens 
were  engaged  seem  to  have  excited  their  natural  taste  for 
lampoon  and  libel,  and  in  the  democratic  period  which 
followed  the  expulsion  of  Theagenes  (about  6co  B.C.)  they 
developed  a  rude  and  abusive  comedy,  which  is  only  known 
to  us  through  the  contemptuous  allusions  of  the  old  Attic 
comedians.  It  was  probably  never  written  down,  so  that 
only  stray  verses  survived.2  Susarion  wandered  into  Attica 

1  The  phallic  pomps  celebrated  at  Sikyon  and  the  neighbouring  Doric 
towns  of  Achaia  can  hardly  be  identified  with  even  the  widest  acceptation 
of  Doric  comedy. 

2  Strangely  enough,  the  extravagance  of  their  stage  appliances  (purple 


4<x  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

about  Ol.  50,  and  was  said  to  have  performed  in  Attic  villages. 
The  lines  against  women  cited  as  his  are  not  genuine.  Tolynus 
is  called  the  inventor  of  the  metrical  forms,  but  is  probably, 
as  Meineke  has  suggested,1  confused  with  the  celebrated  Tellen, 
an  early  flute-player,  whose  epitaph  in  the  Anthology  says 
he  was  Trpwrov  yvov-a  yeXotoyufXeli'.  Of  Myllus  we  know 
only  the  proverb  '  Myllus  hears  everything,'  which  seems  as  if 
he  had  represented  the  daily  failings  of  his  townsmen  upon  the 
stage.  Mason  was  the  most  celebrated,  but  was  perhaps  a 
Sicilian  Megarian,  and  was  popular  at  the  court  of  the  Pisistra- 
tidae.  Character  masks  were  called  Masons,  and  on  one  of 
the  Hermse  at  Athens  was  inscribed  his  gnome,  oYr'  ev'fpytffiqc 
'Aya.p.iproi'0.  cijauv  'Amatol. 

§  235-  (c)  We  pass  to  the  more  important  Sicilian  branch 
of  Doric  comedy.  The  earliest  of  whom  we  hear  anything 
is  Aristoxenus  of  Selinus,  placed  by  Eusebius  about  Ol.  29, 
who  is  spoken  of  as  'the  originator  of  those  who  recited 
iambics  according  to  the  ancient  fashion.'  2  The  word  ta//- 
fii£eiv  was  early  used  (like  yftyvpiiZeiv)  for  lampooning,  and 
we  may  be  certain  that  among  the  rich  and  prosperous 
Sicilians  there  was  ample  time  and  occasion  to  encourage  this 
sort  of  amusement.  Cicero  and  Quintilian  speak  of  the  Sici- 
lians as  particularly  quick  and  lively  people,  always  ready  with 
a  witty  answer  even  in  untoward  circumstances,  much  as  the 
Irish  would  be  described  by  an  English  stranger  now-a-days. 
But  I  think  the  Germans  are  wrong  in  inferring  that  this  Roman 
description  applies  to  the  Sicilians  as  compared  with  other 
Greeks,  and  not  merely  to  the  contrast  Cicero  felt  to  the  stupid 
Roman  boors,  who,  like  the  English  rustic,  combined  political 
sense  with  social  ignorance  and  dullness.  But  the  Sicilian 
smartness  at  repartee,  and  their  love  of  gossip  and  amusement, 
arose  not  merely  from  the  lively  Greek  temperament,  but  from 
this  combined  with  material  wealth  and  political  education. 

hangings)  is  cited  by  Aristotle  (Nic.  Eth.  iv.    2,  §  20)  as  an  example  of 
wastefulness.     But  this  was  in  the  fourth  century  B.C. 

1  Hist.  Com.  p.  38. 

2  Hephaestion  adds  a  specimen  of  his  anapaests  :  ris  oAa£yj/iav  irAe/jra? 
Tape'x«i  TUV 


CH.  xix.       PHORMOS  AND  DEINOLOCHOS.  401 

The  splendour  of  the  Syracusan  court  under  Gelon  and  Hieron 
developed,  among  other  literary  forms,  that  of  a  distinct  and 
real  comedy,  in  which  three  masters  distinguished  themselves 
— all  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  These  were 
Epicharmus,  Phormos  and  Deinolochos.  Concerning  the  pre- 
parations for  this  comedy,  the  obscure  forerunners  of  these 
men,  and  concerning  the  details  of  their  performances,  we  are 
totally  in  the  dark. 

Of  the  latter  two  we  only  know  that  Phormis  (perhaps 
a  local  form  for  Phormos1)  was  contemporary  with  Epichar- 
mus, and  came  from  the  district  of  Maenalon  in  Arcadia ;  that 
he  was  intimate  in  Gelon's  palace  and  the  instructor  of  his 
children;  that  he  was,  moreover,  so  renowned  in  war  under 
Gelon  and  Hieron  as  to  justify  his  dedicating  certain  offerings 
at  Olympia,  which  Pausanias  describes  ;  and  that  he  was  the 
author  of  six  comedies  on  mythological  subjects — Admetus, 
Alkinoos,  the  Fall  of  Ilion,  Perseus,  &c.,  of  which  not  a  single 
fragment  has  survived.  He  also  improved  the  stage  dresses 
and  hangings. 

Deinolochos,  who  is  placed  in  the  seventy-third  Ol.  and  called 
a  pupil  or  rival  of  Epicharmus,  composed  fourteen  dramas  in 
the  Doric  dialect,  which  are  only  cited  about  a  dozen  times 
by  grammarians  for  peculiar  forms.  The  titles  known  are  the 
Amazons,  Telephus,  Medea,  Althea,  and  the  Comic  Tragedy. 
So  far  as  we  can  see,  these  two  men  developed  that  peculiar 
form  of  comedy  for  which  Epicharmus  also  was  famous,  that  of 
the  travesty  of  gods  and  heroes.  This  mythological  farce  of 
the  .Sicilians  is  thought  by  the  Germans  to  have  differed  from  the 
satyrical  dramas  of  the  Attic  tragedians  in  that  the  gods  and 
heroes  were  here  themselves  ridiculed,  whereas  in  our  extant 
satyrical  drama,  the  Cyclops,  the  hero  Odysseus  retains  his  dig- 
nity, but  is  brought  into  the  society  of  Silenus  and  his  lazy  and 
wanton  followers.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  there  is  evi- 

1  This  is  Lobcck's  notion.  But  the  curious  variation  in  the  name  and 
the  single  mention  of  Phormis,  the  general  or  warrior,  by  Pausanias,  have 
led  Lorenz,  I  think  justly,  to  doubt  the  identity  of  the  warrior  with  the 
comedian,  and  assume  the  latter  to  have  been  Phormos.  Cf.  his  Ei>i- 
charmos,  p.  85,  note. 


402  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xrx. 

dence  of  a  close  relation  between  the  two  branches,  as  will 
presently  appear. 

§  236.  EPICHARMUS  was  a  much  greater  man,  and  accord- 
ingly somewhat  more  of  his  work  and  influence  has  survived. 
On  his  life  we  have  only  a  short  and  dry  article  by  Diogenes 
Laertius,  who  classes  him  among  the  philosophers,  without 
mentioning  his  comedies,  and  a  jumbled  notice  in  Suidas, 
which  seems  altogether  untrustworthy  when  it  contradicts  the 
statements  of  Diogenes.  According  to  this  latter,  Epichar- 
mus  was  the  son  of  Elithales  of  Kos,  and  came,  when  three 
months  old,  with  his  father  to  the  Sicilian  Megara.  If  he  was 
a  follower  of  Pythagoras  during  his  life,  he  must  have  visited 
Magna  Grascia.  But  he  afterwards  removed  to  Syracuse,  which 
claims  the  chief  honour  in  being  the  scene  of  his  works.  Dio- 
genes' account  of  his  writings  is  very  curious  and  unsatis- 
factory. *  He  left  memoirs  (i/7rojuj'»/juar«),  in  which  he  QvaioXoye', 
yi'WjuoXoytt,  tarpoXoyeT — discusses  nature,  utters  moral  gnomes, 
and  gives  medical  receipts.'  This  implies  that  the  com- 
piler had  access  only  to  a  selection  of  notable  passages  from 
his  works,  and  did  not  know  his  comedies.  He  adds  that 
he  marked  them  as  his  own  by  anagrams,  which  looks  as  if 
the  writings  were  spurious,  and  we  know  that  false  Epichar- 
mian  writings  were  extant ;  also  that  he  died  aged  ninety  years. 
Yet  the  main  substance  of  this  notice  seems  to  be  true.  The 
poet  was  born  about  Ol.  60,  and  must  have  visited  Magna  Grsecia 
before  the  break-up  of  the  Pythagoreans  in  Ol.  68.  Whether 
he  really  entered  the  Pythagorean  order  we  do  not  know.  On 
his  return  to  Sicilian  Megara,  he  set  himself  to  giving  a  more 
literary  form  to  the  rude  farces  which  already  existed  among  the 
Megarians.  About  Ol.  73  he  appears  of  great  fame  at  the  court 
of  Gelon,  and  more  especially  of  Hieron  in  Syracuse,  where 
he  met  the  greatest  literary  men  of  the  day,  and  died  at  a  great 
age. 

§  237.  The  notice  that  he  added  letters  to  the  alphabet  arises 
either  from  some  later  letters  being  first  adopted  in  his  works, 
or  from  his  intimacy  with  Simonides  at  Syracuse.  It  is  not 
impossible,  as  Simonides  did  adopt  some  additions,  that  he 
persuaded  Epicharmus  to  spread  their  use  in  copies  of  his  very 


CH.  xix.  EPICHARMUS.  403 

popular  plays.  There  are  two  or  three  anecdotes  preserved  of 
his  intercourse  with  Hieron.  The  best  epigram  upon  him  is  not 
that  quoted  by  Diogenes,  but  one  remaining  to  us  among  the 
poems  of  Theocritus,  which  seems  genuine.  We  must  imagine 
the  court  of  Hieron,  notwithstanding  his  occasional  cruelty  and 
suspicion,  as  the  most  brilliant  and  cultivated  centre  in  the 
Hellenic  world.  It  is  likely  that  Epicharmus  here  met  not 
only  Simonides,  but  also  Bacchylides,  Pindar,  and  ^Eschylus.1 
We  must  add  to  this  list  an  acquaintance  with  Theognis,  who 
resided  at  the  Sicilian  Megara  during  the  poet's  earlier  years 
Being  thus  in  contact  with  the  greatest  literary  men  of  the  age, 
he  was  not  less  familiar  with  early  Greek  philosophy.  Pythagoras 
we  have  already  mentioned.  There  are  remaining  distinct  allu- 
sions, perhaps  polemical,  to  the  opinions  of  both  Xenophanes  and 
Heracleitus.  Nay  more,  so  profound  were  the  speculative  allu- 
sions in  his  comedies,  that  they  seem  to  have  been  gathered,  and 
to  have  obtained  great  importance  at  an  early  date,  so  much  so 
that  his  latest  biographer  holds  him  to  have  composed  a  didactic 
poem  Trept  <^u<T£wc,  on  nature.  This  notion  is,  however,  in  itself 
improbable.  The  obscure  notices  of  his  medical,  and  even 
veterinary,  treatises  rest  on  equally  untrustworthy  grounds.  But 
his  comedies  were  very  widely  known  and  quoted  ;  and  in  them 
he  was  said  to  put  forth  his  views  in  dramatic  form,  perhaps 
for  safety's  sake,  as  may  have  been  the  case  with  Euripides. 
Plato  knew  them  well,  and  cites  them  as  Heraclitic  in  tone, 
and  the  work  of  the  chief  of  comic  writers.2  The  younger 
Dionysius  wrote  about  them.  The  most  important  work  upon 
him  was  the  critical  essay  of  Apollodorus,  in  ten  books.  Ennius 
compiled  a  poem  called  Epicharmus  from  his  philosophical 
utterances,  of  which  a  few  lines  on  physical  speculations  survive, 
which  were  perhaps  put  into  the  poet's  mouth.3 

1  lie  is  even  said  to  have  ridiculed  the  latter  (Schol.  ^isch.  Eumen. 
626)  for  his  constant  use  of  the  word  ri(i.a.\(pov/jfvos. 

2  Thecet.  152  D. 

8  The  statement  of  Horace,  (Dicitur)  Plautus  ad  exemplar  Siculi  pro- 
perare  Epicharmi  (Epp.  ii.  I,  58),  has  given  rise  to  great  discussion.  He 
mentions  this  as  only  the  theory  of  the  critics  who  liked  old  Latin  poetry, 
and  compared  it  with  great  Greek  models.  But  '  properare '  is  a  curious 
word,  and  seems  only  to  apply  to  the  easy  flow  of  the  dialogue.  There 


404  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE   CH.  xix. 

§  238.  We  have  still  the  names  and  some  fragments  of  the 
thirty-five  comedies  acknowledged  as  genuine.1  Our  fragments 
do  not  tell  us  much  about  the  plots  of  these  plays ;  but  it  is  more 
than  probable  that  there  was  not  much  plot,  as  is  the  case  even 
with  the  old  Attic  comedy,  and  that  the  whole  interest  lay  in  a 
clever  dialogue,  and  the  working  out  of  single  comic  scenes,  in 
which  either  celebrated  myths  were  travestied,  or  philosophical 
notions  aired  and  parodied.  There  is  also  reason  to  think 
that  rhetorical  subtleties,  such  as  antitheses,  and  other  devices 
which  led  to  the  system  of  Korax  and  Tisias,  were  also  ridi- 
culed, and  that  accordingly  the  first  beginnings  of  Greek  elo- 
quence are  here  to  be  detected.2  Lorenz,  in  his  monograph, 
compares  with  a  good  deal  of  point  the  simpler  pieces  of 
Moliere,  such  as  the  Manage  force?  The  love  of  eating  and 
drinking,  so  prominent  in  Sicily,  suggested  to  him  his  travesty 
called  the  Marriage  of  Hebe  (with  Heracles),  in  which  the  feast 
seems  to  have  occupied  most  of  the  play,  and  in  which  the 
gluttony  of  the  gods  was  portrayed.4  On  account  of  the 
numerous  dishes  cited,  we  have  it  quoted,  some  forty  times,  by 
Athenaeus,  in  its  two  editions.  Athenseus  has  also  preserved  to 

is  no  evidence  of  any  plot  of  Plautus  being  borrowed  from  Epicharmus. 
The  prologue  of  the  Menachmi  only  asserts  Sicilian  scenery  and  manners 
in  the  play,  and  is,  moreover,  probably  spurious.  The  Romans  copied  the 
new  Attic  comedy  in  these  plays,  their  Atellanoe  or  farces  were  taken  from 
Italic  or  Sikelic  sources. 

1  They  may  be   divided   into   three  classes — mythological  travesties, 
such  as  the 'Ayuwcoj,  Boucnpjy,  "A/Sets  ydfj.os,  brought  out  afterwards  in  a  new 
edition  as  Mot/erai,  'O8v<rcrtvs  auT<5yU.oA.os,  'OSvfffffvs  va.va.y6s,  &c.  ;  character 
plays,  such  as  'EArn's  ^  TT\OVTOS,  Qeapoi,  'Eiriv'iKios  ;    and  lastly,  dialectical 
plays,  based  on  the  love  of  dispute  and  argument  among  Sicilians,  which 
seems  to  have  been  quite  as  remarkable  as  it  was  at  Athens.     This  class 
is  represented  by  his  Fa  Kal  6d\affffa,  the  contest  of  sea  and  land  (as  to 
advantage),  and  the  \6yos  /coJ  \oyiva. 

2  Cf.  Blass,  Att.  Ber.  i.  p.  17. 
8  Lorenz,  p.  226. 

4  Here  is  the  picture  of  Heracles  at  his  dinner  (Lorenz,  p.  223)  : 

irparov  p.ev  erf  *'  fffBovr'  ISois  viv,  airoddvots, 
PpflJ.fi  iJ.f>>  &  <pdpvy£  evSoff,  dpa/Se?  5'  a  yvd.Qos, 
ilrtHpft  8'  6  y6fj,tl>ios,  rfrptyf  8'  6  Kwt'iSwv, 
ffl£ft  St  TCUS  pivfa-fft,  Kivel  8'  otfara. 


CH.  xix.  EPICHARMUS.  405 

us  his  picture  of  the  parasite,  a  character  first  invented  for  the 
stage  by  him,  from  the  'E\7r/e,  a  character  comedy.1  A  great 
many  of  the  other  fragments  are  likewise  upon  dishes  and 
eating. 

By  far  the  most  important  philosophical  passages  remain- 
ing to  us  are,  however,  preserved  from  another  curious  and 
accidental  source.  Diogenes,  who  says  nothing  ofEpicharmus' 
comedies  in  his  short  official  notice  of  the  poet,  quotes  in  his 
life  of  Plato  a  Sicilian  rhetor,  Alkimos,  who  wrote  a  book  to 
show  that  all  Plato's  doctrines  were  borrowed  from  Epichar- 
mus.  In  support  of  this  theory,  which  owes  its  existence  to 
the  Pythagorean  and  Eleatic  elements  in  Plato's  teaching, 
which  the  Sicilian  poet  brought  on  his  stage,  several  dialec- 
tical, metaphysical,  and  rhetorical  arguments  are  quoted.2 
The  discussion  of  their  deeper  import,  however,  belongs  rather 
to  the  history  of  philosophy  than  of  literature.  The  narra- 
tive form,  which  seems  predominant  in  his  plays,  has  misled 
Lorenz  and  others  to  ascribe  these  passages  to  a  poem 


§  239.  As  there  never  was  but  one  Greek  theatre  at  Syracuse 
—  that  of  which  the  magnificent  remains  still  strike  the  traveller 
of  to-day  —  we  must  conceive  these  comedies  performed  in  it, 
probably  with  a  chorus  like  that  of  modern  plays,  and  not  a 

~2,vv5enrvfca  -rep  \tavri,  /caAeVcu  Se?  [tSvov, 
Kal  ry  ya  yu.rj5e  Xuvn  KwvSfv  6e7  Ku\e?v. 
TTji/et  5e  xapiets  T'  et/A  Kal  iroifu  iroKvv 
yt\<>>Ta.  Kal  rbv  lirriiatT'  eiraiveca. 

Kat  /CO  TfS  O.VTIOV  TJ  A?J   T"f]VCf)  \eyflV, 

ri]vcf  KvSd£ofj.ai  re  /can-'  Siv  i]x&6fj.a.}'. 
K^ireira  iro\\a  Kara<j)a.y<ai>,  Tr^AA.'  ffj.iri(6v, 

&TTflfJ.t.     \1>XVOV  8'   0\>X  <5  TCUS  fJ.01   ffV/jl<pfpfl' 

epiria  8'  o\iffdpa.£(cv  re  Kal  /cara  CTKOTOS 
fpTJfj.os-  SKKO,  8'  fvrvx<a  TOLS  irepnr6\ots, 
TO  SO'  olov  ayaBbv  eTrtXeyia  TO?S  6eo?s,  OTI 
oil  \£>VTI  7rA€?oj/  aAA^  (JLaimySiv  ri  fj.f. 
firel  Se  x'  e'tKu  oi/caS(s  /cara^Popeiy, 
&ffrp(aTOS  evS(a  Kal  TO,  fj.ev  wpiar'  ov  KOcDj 
as  KC£  (i?  aKparos  oivos  dj 

'  Diog.  L.  iii.  12,  9,  sa, 


406  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

constant  element  as  in  tragedy.  The  dialect  of  the  fragments 
is  a  refined  and  literary  Doric;1  the  metres,  of  which  the 
trochaic  tetrameter  was  called  the  Epicharmian  metre  from 
his  frequent  use  of  it,  are  simple  and  correct.  We  still  have 
anapaests  and  iambics  combined  with  the  trochees.  There  were 
many  lines  so  celebrated  as  to  be  quoted  all  through  Greek 
literature.2 

If  we  consider  the  great  celebrity  of  Epicharmus'  plays 
which  were  brought  out  at  the  most  brilliant  centre  of  Greek 
literature,  at  the  town  which  took  up  the  literary  splendour 
ruined  at  Miletus,  and  only  dawning  at  Athens,  we  need  not 
be  surprised  that  he  exercised  a  strong  influence  on  the  Attic 
drama.  But  this  is  not  felt  in  Attic  comedy  so  much  as  in 
the  Attic  satyric  drama,  where  the  titles  of  the  plays  constantly 
suggest  Epicharmian  models,  and  even  in  the  later  tragedy, 
where  we  find  many  heroes  endowed  with  low  qualities,  and 
perpetually  appearing  on  the  stage  in  a  sorry  garb  and  still 
sorrier  character.  Thus  the  serio-comic  features  in  the  Heracles 
of  Euripides'  Alcestis,  and  especially  his  voracity  ;  the  mean- 
ness of  Menelaus,  and  knavery  of  Odysseus  in  many  other  plays, 
appear  to  me  to  have  been  suggested  by  the  great  popularity  of 
the  travesties  of  the  Sicilian  comedian.  It  is  not  impossible 
that  the  introduction  ot  philosophy  upon  the  stage  may  also 
have  been  borrowed  from  him  by  Euripides,  who  seems  to  me 
to  have  more  points  of  contact  with  Epicharmus  than  have  yet 
been  observed.* 

§  240.  We  pass  to  the  Syracusan  SOPHRON,  son  of  Aga- 
thocles  and  Damnasylhs,  who  lived  about  the  middle  of  the 

1  Yet  both  Epicharmus  and  Sophron  are  cited  by  the  scholiasts  as 
writing  in  the  old  and  harsh  Doric  dialect,  in  contrast  to  Theocritus,  who 
writes  the  softer  and  more  elegant  new  Doric. 

2  As,  for  example  : 

Ndos  6pri  Kal  v6os  ct/cot/et  •  r&\\a  K«<£ck  Kal  rv(j)\d, 
and 

No<£e  Kal  /J.efnva.ff'1  lariffTtiv  •  apOpa  ravra  TO.V  (ppevwy. 

8  The  best  monographs  on  Epicharmus  are  by  Grysar  (de  Dor.  Comced. 

sub  fin.),  Welcker  (Kl.  Schrift.  i.),    Bernhardy   (in  Ersch  und  Gruber's 

Encydop.),  Holm,  CescA.  Sic.  i.  231,  sq.,  and  lastly,  A.O.  F.  Lorenz's^/z- 

charmos  which  has  a  complete  collection  of  the  fragments  in  the  appendix. 


CH.  XIX.  SOPHROWS  MIMES.  407 

fifth  century  B.C.,  and  composed  Mimes,  or  mimic  dialogues, 
probably  in  rythmical  prose,  both  with  male  and  female  cha- 
racters. His  son  Xenarchus  followed  his  example  in  the  time 
of  the  elder  Dionysius,  who  employed  him  to  lampoon  the 
people  of  Rhegium.  The  dialect  was  a  somewhat  broader 
and  more  vernacular  Doric  than  Epicharmus',  but  the  dramatic 
force  and  truth  of  Sophron's  writing  made  him  justly  celebrated. 
Not  only  did  Plato  study  him  carefully  in  order  to  give  life  to  his 
dialogues,  but  two  of  the  best  of  Theocritus'  poems,  the  second 
and  fifteenth  idylls,  are  stated  to  have  been  directly  copied 
from  the  'AKc'orpiat  and  'lo-fyua^ouo-ru — the  former  clumsily 
(aTraporaXwe)  copied,  says  the  scholiast^  in  spite  of  its  acknow- 
ledged excellence.1  Botzon  argues  that  the  title  of  the  Isthmian 
mime  was  Tai  Qa/iemt  ra"Iff0/xia,  and,  what  is  more  important, 
points  out  that,  to  judge  from  Theocritus'  imitation,  it  was 
probably  an  account  of  the  ceremonies  of  the  Lament  for 
Melicertes,  which  were  closely  analogous  to  the  Adonis  cull 
and  were  a  more  natural  scene  for  women's  conversation  than 
the  Isthmian  games,  to  which  married  women  were  not  ad- 
mitted. As  to  the  Akestrice,  he  prefers  to  translate  it  the 
Stitchers,  and  imagines  it  to  have  been  a  dialogue  among 
girls,  corresponding  to  the  French  grisettes,  in  which  their 
love  affairs  were  -discussed.  From  Theocritus'  imitation,  I 
think  this  view  wrong,  and  that  it  means  the  Curing  Women, 
those  old  half  quacks  half  witches,  who  are  common  in  every 
superstitious  society.  But  the  scantiness  of  our  fragments 
leaves  room  for  nothing  but  conjectures. 

As  to  the  controversy  whether  the  mimes  were  in  prose  or 
in  verse,  I  fancy  them  like  Walt  Whitman's  so-called  poems,2 
which,  if  they  survive,  may  yet  give  rise  to  a  similar  discus- 
sion. The  mimes  of  Sophron  were  evidently  very  coarse 
also — another  parallel — and  were  full  of  proverbs,  and  full  of 
humour,  often  using  patois,  which  is  very  rare  in  Greek  lite- 
rature. But  Sophron's  neglect  of  form  did  not  imply  a  revolu- 

1  In  his  careful  program  (Lyck,  1856). 

2  Botzon  quotes  a  scholiast  on  a  Hymn  of  Gregory  Naz.,  which  was 
imitated,  as  to  style,  from  Sophron :  ovros  yctp  p.6vos  rSov  iroirirwv 

riffi  Kal  K<i>\ots  txpyffaTO  irotijTJfcJjs  ava\oyias 


4o8  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XIX. 

tionary  creed,  it  was  rather  a  carefully  concealed  submission 
to  the  laws  of  art.  We  have  no  hint  whatever  as  to  the  per- 
formance of  these  mimes,  but  their  early  date  and  style 
seem  foreign  to  a  reading  public,  and  we  may  imagine  them 
brought  out  in  private  society  after  the  manner  of  the  Syracusan 
juggler's  performance  at  the  end  of  Xenophon's  Symposium, 
where  the  marriage  of  Dionysus  and  Ariadne  was  pantomimed 
in  a  very  suggestive  way.  Plutarch's  mention  of  an  attempt  at 
Rome  to  perform  Plato's  dialogues  dramatically  seems  to  point 
in  the  same  direction.  We  hear  that  the  Latin  satirist  Persius 
also  copied  Sophron,  apparently  with  little  success  in  elegance 
or  dramatic  power.  There  can,  however,  be  no  doubt  of  the  re- 
markable genius  of  the  man,  who  was  only  in  part  a  successor 
to  Epicharmus— in  his  proverbial  features,  and  in  the  por- 
traiture of  ordinary  life.  But  Epicharmus'  philosophic  earnest- 
ness found  no  Syracusan  successor. 

The  extant  titles  of  these  mimes  suggest  the  life  and  pur- 
suits of  the  lower  classes ;  viz.  The  Tunny  Fishes,  the  NV/J- 
^)07roj'oe  or  Bride- dresser,  jratBtva  Trotpvfctc,  '£l\t£ve  rav  aypoi- 
a»ra»',  the  Fisher  and  the  Husbandman  (in  what  relation  the 
loss  of  the  verb  leaves  us  in  doubt) ;  The  Women  who  say 
they  draw  down  the  Goddess  (moon  ?).  Also  a  Promethens 
and  a  Nuntius  are  named.  The  few  remaining  fragments  are 
collected  by  Bloomfield,  Classical  Journal,  vol.  iv.,  and  by 
Botzon  in  a  Program  (separately  printed  as  a  tract,  Marien- 
burg,  I86?).1 

§  241.  The  comedy  of  the  Italiots,  which  found  its  chief  seat 
in  the  luxurious  and  laughter-loving  Tarentum,  does  not  come 
within  the  range  of  classical  Greek  literature  :  its  chief  representa- 
tive, Rhinthon,  belongs  to  the  Ptolemaic  age,  and  his  work  only 
survives  in  the  imitation  of  his  Amphitryo,  a  comic  tragedy, 
or  parody  of  tragedy,  by  Plautus.  The  whole  subject  of  the 
varied  comic  performances,  which  were  of  old  popular  in 
Magna  Graecia,  and  gave  rise  to  various  subdivisions,  Hilarodia, 

Botzon's  collection  comprises  some  1 50  words  and  phrases,  almost  all 
cited  for  their  dialect  by  Athenceus,  or  by  grammarians  and  lexicographers. 
They  give  us  no  idea  of  Sophron 's  literary  skill,  but  show  his  local  colour, 
and  his  strongly  proverbial  tone. 


CH.  xix.  RISE  OF  BUCOLIC  POETRY.  409 

a  parody  of  tragedy,  Magodia,  a  parody  of  comedy,  Autalogia 
and  Kinadologia,  moralising  and  indecent  satires,  Phlyako- 
graphia,  Hilarotragocdia,  and  the  rest,  together  with  lists  of 
names  of  authors  and  pieces — all  these  belong  to  the  curiosities 
cf  Greek  literature,  and  still  more  to  the  prolegomena  of  Roman 
comedy  and  satire,  and  have  accordingly  been  fully  handled  by 
O.  Jahn  in  the  introduction  to  his  Persius.  It  is  said  that 
many  painted  vases  of  Magna  Grsecia  represent  scenes  from 
their  various  farces.  This  whole  class  of  indecent,  scurrilous, 
or  merely  amusing  comic  performances  naturally  came  into 
favour  at  the  courts  of  Alexander  and  his  successors,  also  among 
the  later  tyrants,  whose  intellectual  calibre  may  be  estimated  by 
their  recreations.  The  gastronomical  turn  of  this  and  other 
Greek  comedy  was  developed  by  Hegemon  of  Thasos,  who 
was  popular  at  Athens  by  his  parody  of  epical  grandeur  well 
delivered  on  this  homely  subject.  This  line  was  adopted  by 
Archestratus  of  Gela,  whose  j}<W(i0£ia  Ennius  translated. 
Crates  and  Matron  are  mentioned  later.  But  the  most  re- 
markable and  serious  of  all  the  parodists  seems  to  have  been 
Timon  of  Phlius,  a  serious  and  bitter  sceptic  of  the  school  of 
Pyrrho,  who  lived  about  280  B.C.  Of  his  various  works  the 
most  celebrated  were  the  2/A\oe,  in  three  books,  one  narrative, 
the  rest  in  dialogue,  in  which  he  introduced  Xenophanes,  and 
ridiculed  the  dogmatists  in  epic  fashion.  This  man's  life  and 
work  have  been  thoroughly  discussed  in  a  Latin  monograph 
by  Curt  Wachsmuth.  The  indecencies  of  Sotades,  and  other 
later  parodists,  were  in  the  Ionic  dialect,  and  therefore  do  not 
come  under  the  head  of  Doric  comedy  ;  they  are>  in  any  case, 
not  worth  discussing. 

§  242.  But  from  another  side,  the  mimic  poetry  of  the  Sici- 
lians made  a  great  mark  in  Greek  literature.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  bucolic  vein  was  early  and  strongly  developed 
among  Sicilian  shepherds.  The  use  of  the  shepherd's  pipe  and 
of  responsive  song  was  early  developed  in  the  country,  and 
from  the  oldest  time  in  some  peculiar  relation  to  the  shepherd 
life  in  the  mountains  of  Arcadia — worshipping  the  same  god, 
Pan,  honouring  the  same  traditions,  and  pursuing  the  same 
habits.  It  even  appears  to  me  that  in  the  great  days  of  Gelon 

VOL.  i. — 18 


4io  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

and  Hieron  there  was  a  considerable  emigration  from  Arcadia 
to  Sicily  —  the  Alpheus  flowing  into  Arethusa  —  for  we  know 
that  their  mercenary  armies  were  recruited  from  Arcadia,  and 
doubtless  the  veterans  were  better  rewarded  with  upland  pas- 
tures in  rich  Sicily  than  by  returning  to  their  harsh  and  wintry 
home.  But  the  Arcadian  music  found  itself  already  at  home 
in  a  country  where  the  legends  of  the  shepherd  Daphnis 
were  older  than  Stesichorus,  and  had  been  raised  by  him  into 
classical  literature.  According  to  various  authorities,  Daphnis 
was  the  son  of  Hermes  and  a  nymph,  and  brought  up  in  a 
grove  of  laurels.  Being  an  accomplished  singer,  and  taught  by 
Pan  to  play  on  the  pipe,  he  became  the  companion  of  Artemis 
in  her  hunting,  and  delighted  her  with  his  music.  His  tragic 
end,  which  is  connected  with  his  love  for  a  nymph,  and  his 
faithlessness,  was  variously  told,  and  these  versions  were  the 
favourite  subject  of  pastoral  lays,  which  were  attached  to  the 
worship  of  Artemis  throughout  Sicily,  and  celebrated  in  musical 
contests  at  her  feasts  in  Syracuse,  where  shepherds,  called 
fiovKoXiatrral,  sang  alternately  m  what  was  called  Priapean 
verse,  of  which  the  scholiasts  have  preserved  a  specimen.1 
Other  shepherds,  such  as  the  Komatas  and  Menalkas  of  Theo- 
critus, and  the  Diomus  of  Epicharmus,  were  also  similarly 
celebrated.  Indeed,  there  are  slight  but  distinct  traces  that  the 
pastoral  element  was  not  absent  from  the  comedies  of  Epi- 

Ae'fai  rctv  a.ya.db.v  T^XCLV 

Ac|ai  TO.V  vylfiav 
*A.v  (f>fpo,u.€v  irapa.  TO.S  6eov 


There  are  the  most  interesting  modern  parallels  in  Sicily  quoted  in 
Holm's  chapter  (Gcschichte  Sidlieifs,  vol.  ii.  pp.  306-7)  on  this  subject.  Con- 
tests in  improvisation,  carried  on  in  question  and  answer,  or  in  statement  and 
counter  statement,  preserving  the  metre,  are  still  common  in  Sicily,  where 
the  competitors  are  obliged  to  lay  aside  their  knives  when  they  commence, 
so  great  is  their  excitement.  Both  the  satiric  and  the  erotic  tone  in  the  old 
bucolics  survives,  as  we  might  expect  ;  but  it  is  indeed  surprising  to  learn 
that  the  religious  side—  of  old  the  worship  of  Artemis,  and  the  laments  for 
Daphnis,  her  favourite—  is  still  there,  and  trustworthy  observers  were  pre- 
sent in  churches  during  the  Feasts  of  St.  John  Baptist,  of  the  Crucified 
(May  3),  and  of  other  saints,  when  the  day  was  spent  in  alternate  impro- 
vising on  the  lives  of  the  saints  and  on  the  sufferings  of  our  Lord. 


CH.  XIX.  THE  PICTURESQUE  IN  GREEK  POETRY.  411 

charmus.1  The  satyric  drama  of  Athens,  as  we  know  from 
the  only  extant  specimen,  the  Cyclops,  was  very  pastoral  in 
its  scenes,  and  there  is  nothing  more  Theocritean,  as  people 
would  say,  than  the  first  chorus  of  satyrs  in  that  play.  What  is 
even  more  important,  the  comic  poet  Eupolis,  who  may  have 
borrowed  more  than  is  suspected  from  Epicharmus,  brought  out 
an  Alyec,  of  which  the  scanty  fragments  indicate  the  same 
pastoral  tone.  We  may  be  certain  that  Sophron  did  not  omit 
this  side  of  common  life  in  his  Mimes,  though  it  can  hardly 
have  been  prominent,  as  the  scholiasts  do  not  cite  examples  in 
the  arguments  to  Theocritus'  poems.2 

§  -243.  But  it  seems  to  me  highly  improbable  that  THEO- 
CRITUS, a  poet  of  so  strictly  imitative  an  age,  and  of  so  very 
imitative  a  genius,  should  have  developed  a  remarkable  origi- 
nality in  this  single  direction,  and  I  therefore  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  class  him  as  an  imitator  of  the  Sicilian  mimic  poetry. 
Two  direct  imitations  of  Sophron  (not  strictly  bucolic  poems) 
have  just  been  noticed,  and  I  have  already  spoken  of  Theo- 
critus' epic  and  lyric  efforts  in  connection  with  the  Homeric 
Hymns,  the  later  epics,  and  the  poems  of  Alcaeus  and  Sappho. 

But  his  real  fame  rests  upon  his  pastoral  poems,  in  which 
he  introduced  shepherds,  herdsmen,  and  fishermen  in  familiar 
discourse,  and  in  the  dialect  of  Sicily,  but  refined  by  the 
highest  literary  skill.  These  bucolic  poems  have  throughout 
a  mimic  or  dramatic  character,  as  the  scholiasts  observe  ;  the 
poet's  person  is  concealed  under  those  of  his  speakers,  or  he 
is  himself  (as  in  the  7th  Id.)  merely  one  speaker  among  several. 
They  have  also  a  common  feature  in  the  pastoral  scenery  in 
which  they  are  laid.  It  is  well  known  that  earlier  Greek 
poetry  was  a  poetry  of  cities  and  of  men,  and  very  seldom  ap- 
proached what  we  call  the  picturesque.  In  the  rare  exceptions 


1  He  was  figuratively  called  the  son  of  Xi/ictpos  and  ^K'LS,  and  we  even 
have  a  fragment  in  which  he  says  irotJuej't/c<Jj'  n  yue'Aos  at>Ae?(r0at.     Lorenz, 
fragg.  B  130. 

2  Unfortunately,  our  scholia  on  Theocritus  are  such  poor  stuff,  in  spite 
of  their  fullness,  that  we  cannot  depend  upon  this  argument,  and  Sophron 
may  have  treated  many  of  Theocritus'  subjects  without  being  mentioned 
by  these  late  authorities. 


412  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

(such  as  the  Homeric  Hymn  to  Pan,  and  some  of  Euripides' 
lyrics)  we  find  the  sounds  of  nature  more  prominent  than 
the  sights,  and  this  feature  survives  in  all  the  pictures  of  Theo- 
critus. But  the  growth  of  large  cities  on  such  sites  as  that  of 
Alexandria,  and  the  consequent  wear  and  weariness  of  modern 
city  life,  gave  a  peculiar  charm  to  the  loca  pastorum  deserta, 
atque  otia  dia.  Hence  the  growth  of  a  literary  taste  for  the 
pursuits  and  pleasures  of  the  country.  Thirdly,  the  great 
majority  of  bucolic  poems  have  an  erotic  vein.  It  seems 
hard  indeed  to  know  what  other  subjects  could  engross  the 
mind  of  Sicilian  shepherds,  whose  day  was  idled  away  in  at- 
tending on  grazing  herds  and  flocks.  But  a  good  deal  of  harm- 
less banter,  and  some  satirical  touches,  relieve  the  generally  sad 
tone  of  the  Sicilian  muse,  which  loves  to  dwell  on  the  misfor- 
tunes and  griefs  of  love. 

§  244.  We  know  but  little  of  Theocritus'  life.  He  is  called 
the  son  of  Praxagoras  and  Philinna,  and  also  (owing  to  his 
apparently  calling  himself  Simichidas)  the  son  of  Simichus,  con- 
cerning whom  the  learned  have  much  puzzled  themselves. 
Whether  his  native  land  was  Kos  or  Syracuse  is  uncertain.  He 
lived  much  in  Sicily,  but  was  also  educated  by  Askle 
piades  of  Samos  and  Philetas,  apparently  at  Kos,  and  was 
very  intimate "  with  the  physician  Nikias  of  Miletus,  and  the 
poet  Aratus  of  Soli.  He  spent,  moreover,  some  time  at  Alex- 
andria, and  at  the  court  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  where  he 
wrote  his  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  and  seventeenth  idylls,  about 
the  year  259  B  c.  His  poem  in  praise  of  Hieron  II.  seems 
to  date  earlier,  when  he  lived  in  Syracuse,  about  265  B.C. 
We  may  therefore  consider  the  poet  to  have  flourished  about 
270-50  B.C.,  and  accordingly  he  belonged  to  that  learned 
epoch,  when  Alexandria  led  Greek  literature,  and  when  the 
greatest  men  of  the  day  spent  their  lives  in  imitating  or  in 
criticising  the  older  masters.  Only  two  of  the  poets  of  that 
age  have  attained  to  a  permanent  fame.  Callimachus,  Phi- 
letas, and  others  highly  prized  in  their  day  decayed  with 
Roman  culture.  Apollonius  Rhodius  and  Theocritus  have 
survived,  and  are  now  the  two  Alexandrian  poets  of  import- 
ance. But  Apollonius'  models  were  so  great  that  his  talents 


CH.  xix.          THEOCRITUS'  EPIC  IDYLLS.  413 

are  necessarily  eclipsed  by  them;  Theocritus,  among  the  various 
styles  he  attempted,  struck  upon  a  fresh  vein,  which  had  not  be- 
fore attained  to  world-wide  fame.  His  models  being  either 
early  lost  or  altogether  obscure,  he  is  to  us  of  like  importance 
with  those  earlier  masters,  who  enriched  the  worn-out  ways  of 
literature  by  a  new  form,  sought  in  the  true  source  of  all  living 
song — the  voice  of  the  people.  Hence  it  is  to  this  part  of 
his  work,  his  bucolic  and  mimic  poems,  that  he  owes  all  his 
reputation.  His  imitations  of  epic  hymns  and  JEolic  love- 
songs,  though  excellent  in  their  way,  are  only,  like  the  poem  of 
Apollonius,  the  copies  of  greater  originals. 

§  245.  It  is,  I  think,  the  most  reasonable  among  the  many 
conflicting  views  as  to  the  date  of  the  various  poems,  to  assume 
that  the  epic  attempts  of  Theocritus  were  his  earliest,  and  were 
written  before  he  had  found  out  the  true  bent  of  his  genius. 
The  brilliant  Alexandrian  school  of  literature  was  only  in  its 
infancy  ;  many  poets  were  each  contributing  what  they  could 
to  give  a  new  impulse  to  Greek  literature  ;  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  tendency  of  the  day  was  towards  reviving  the 
epic  form.  But  epic  poetry  and  epic  hymns  without  faith  in 
the  myths  of  the  heroic  age  were  not  likely  to  prosper.  Thus 
in  the  elegant  Hymn  to  the  Dioscuri  which  Theocritus  has  left 
us,  the  concluding  adventure  describes  the  Twins  as  engaged 
in  a  most  unjust  dispute,  and  slaying  Lynceus,  who  represents 
the  cause  of  fairness  and  honesty.  Not  even  Pindar  would 
have  done  this,  not  to  say  the  tragic  poets,  who  had  trained 
the  Greek  public  to  a  moral  handling  of  the  old  legends.  But 
all  such  deeper  views  were  foreign  to  Theocritus.  He  found 
the  facts  of  the  myth  before  him,  and  he  tells  them  with  the 
simplicity  not  of  faith,  but  of  moral  indifference.  After  at- 
tempting another  epic  piece  on  Heracles  and  the  Nemean  lion 
in  Ionic  dialect,  he  adopted  the  Doric  style  more  natural  to 
him,  in  which  he  composed  the  Infant  Heracles,  and  the  short 
fragment  on  Pentheus,  which  properly  belongs  to  a  hymn  to 
Dionysus,  and  is  modelled  on  Euripides'  Bacchce.  The  i3th 
Idyll  on  the  rape  of  Hylas  may  be  connected  with  the  same 
epoch  of  the  poet's  work,  but  shows  very  distinctly  the  erotic 
vein  prominent  all  through  his  later  life.  We  may  regard  it, 


414  HISTORY   OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

therefore,  a  transition  to  such  poems  as  the  i2th  Idyll,  and 
perhaps  even  to  the  igth  and  3oth,  though  these  latter  may, 
belong  to  a  later  and  maturer  time.  It  is  fairly  conjectured 
that  while  Theocritus  was  making  these  various  essays  in  poetry, 
many  of  which,  such  as  the  npoiTi^ai^EXirt^tc,  'IJpwiVat,  'iapfloi, 
&c.,  mentioned  by  Suidas,  are  now  lost,  he  was  hoping  to 
attain  the  favour  of  Ptolemy,  but  the  competition  was  too  great, 
and  he  apparently  returned  to  Syracuse,  where  he  addressed 
Hieron  about  the  year  269  in  a  bold  petition  for  the  favour 
and  support  he  had  elsewhere  sought  in  vain.  The  tone 
of  this  Idyll  (16),  as  well  as  of  the  lyth,  composed  a  few 
years  after,  when  he  returned  with  new  renown  to  Alexandria, 
is  somewhat  low  and  servile.  The  bidding  for  royal  favour, 
which  we  can  hardly  excuse  in  Pindar  and  Simonides,  is  still 
more  unpleasant  in  a  later  and  more  conscious  age.  But  there 
is  an  impatient  and  self-asserting  tone  in  the  earlier  poem 
which  makes  way  for  downright  adulation  in  the  later.  The 
object  of  both  was  the  same — an  introduction  to  favour  at 
court,  but  the  former  from  an  unsuccessful,  the  latter  from  an 
accepted  suitor. 

We  may  fairly  assume  that  he  turned  his  attention  at  Syra- 
cuse to  the  mimes  of  Sophron,  and  the  bucolic  poetry  of  the 
people>  and  returned  to  Alexandria  the  discoverer  of  a  new 
style,  which  at  once  distinguished  him  from  his  rivals,  and 
brought  him  his  well-deserved  rewards.  His  bucolic  poems 
were  composed  in  mature  life,  and  probably  at  Alexandria, 
where  their  pastoral  tone  was  very  delightful  to  the  inhabitants 
of  a  crowded  capital  situate  in  the  midst  of  bleak  and  scorching 
sandhills.  One  of  these,  the  yth,  may  be  regarded  as  in  some 
sense  introductory  to  the  rest.  It  celebrates  a  pleasant  day 
spent  with  friends  at  a  harvest  feast,  and  a  bucolic  contest 
carried  on  by  the  way.  It  is  remarkable  that,  though  the 
scene  is  a  real  scene  in  Kos,  which  can  still  be  identified, 
most  of  the  names  are  fictitious  shepherd  names  ;  the  poet  him- 
self being  called  Simichidas,  his  friend  Asklepiades  Lykidas, 
tuiother  Sikelidas.  These  men,  who  were  men  of  learning 
K.nd  culture,  are  presented  under  the  guise  of  shepherds, 
L'ving  their  life  and  attired  in  their  garb.  So  completely  arti- 


CH.  xix.  THEOCRITUS'  IDYLLS.  415 

ficial  is  this  poem  that  we  are  tempted  to  believe  in  a  club  or 
society  of  poets  at  Kos,  like  the  Italian  Arcadia  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  that  bucolic  poetry  had  already  found  a 
literary  development  when  Theocritus  in  his  youth  sojourned  at 
Kos.  The  speakers  make  hardly  any  effort  to  conceal  their 
real  character  under  the  pastoral  mask,  and  Theocritus  men- 
tions with  reverence  his  masters  Philetas  and  Sikelidas,  though 
he  by  and  bye  professes  to  have  learnt  from  the  Muses  as  he 
fed  his  flocks  upon  the  mountains. 

The  other  bucolic  poems  are  simpler  in  structure,  and  more 
dramatic  in  form — the  poet  concealing  himself  behind  his 
characters.  They  comprise  amoebean  strains,  or  contests  of 
shepherds  before  an  umpire,  and  monologues  of  unhappy  lovers, 
such  as  Polyphemus.  The  names  Daphnis,  Thyrsis,  Komatas, 
&c.,  are  used  as  stock  names,  nor  are  the  critics  at  all  justified 
in  rejecting  as  spurious  poems  where  the  Daphnis  does  not  agree 
with  previous  types.  The  metre  generally  used  is  the  bucolic 
hexameter,  which  is  a  mere  literary  form  of  the  Priapean  verses 
already  quoted,  thus  : — 

d5u  fj.ev  a  /j.6ffxos  yapverai,  aSv  tie  ^a  /3cas 
o5u  Se  x&  ffvpiy£,  x&  POVKO\OS,  aSv  6«  Krjytav. 

The  caesura  after  the  fourth  foot,  and  the  beginning  again  with 
the  same  word  immediately  after  it,  show  how  closely  Theo- 
critus followed  the  popular  taste.  In  the  refrains,  too,  which 
are  constant  and  prominent  in  his  poems,  we  find  a  feature 
which,  though  as  old  as  ^Eschylus  and  Euripides,  was  par- 
ticularly frequent  in  the  Sicilian  folk  songs.  The  poetic  contest 
of  the  eighth  poem  is  (exceptionally)  in  elegiacs. 

§  246.  There  are,  properly  speaking,  but  ten  bucolic  poems 
in  the  collection,  in  which  I  include  the  Reaper's  Dialogue  and 
the  Lament  of  Polyphemus.  These  appear  to  have  been  edited  by 
Artemidorus  shortly  after  the  poet's  death,  before  200  B.C.,  and 
contained  the  first  eleven  poems  of  our  collection  (omitting  the 
second),  the  ninth  being  placed  last,  as  is  evident  from  a  sort 
of  postscript  to  that  poem,  appended  by  the  editor  of  the  col- 
lection. The  very  striking  mimic  poems  (ii.  and  xv.),  which 
were  imitated  from  Sophron,  and  the  erotic  poems,  were  after- 
wards added.  Finally,  his  youthful  efforts  in  the  epic  style,  and 


416  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xix. 

several  spurious  pieces,1  were  appended  to  the  collection  as  his 
fame  became  assured.  The  fifteenth  is  a  scene  from  common 
life  in  Alexandria,  which  describes  two  women  and  their  maids 
going  to  the  laying  out  of  Adonis,  in  which  their  dialogue  is  of 
the  greatest  vivacity  and  dramatic  power.  Some  flattery  of 
Ptolemy  and  his  queen,  however  adroitly  brought  in,  rather 
jars  upon  us  in  so  excellent  a  mimic  piece.  The  second, 
which  represents  a  maiden  preparing  magic  charms,  and  con- 
fessing to  the  moon  the  story  of  her  love  and  her  desertion, 
is  a  splendid  painting  of  passion,  which  has  attracted  critics  of 
all  ages.  Racine  thought  he  had  found  nothing  greater  in 
Greek  literature. 

§  247.  These  and  the  bucolic  poems,  with  their  homeliness, 
their  picturesqueness,  and  their  outspoken  realism,  are  the 
masterpieces  of  the  collection.  The  shepherds  of  Theocritus  are 
not  pure  and  innocent  beings,  living  in  a  garden  of  Eden,  or  an 
imgainary  Arcadia,  free  from  sin  and  care.  They  are  men  of 
like  passions  as  we  are,  gross  and  mean  enough  for  ordinary 
life.  But  though  artificially  painted  by  a  literary  townsman, 
they  are  real  shepherds,  living  in  a  real  country,  varying  in 
culture  and  refinement — the  Italiot  characters  are  the  rudei 
— but  all  speaking  human  sentiments  without  philosophy  and 
artifice.  Nay,  even  the  strong  contrast  of  town  and  country 
life,  which  must  have  been  ever  present  to  the  poet,  is  never 

1  The  question  of  the  genuineness  of  each  individual  poem  in  our  col- 
lection is  exceedingly  difficult,  seeing  that  Theocritus  certainly  composed 
in  various  styles,  and  that  in  an  artificial  and  learned  age  any  great  unity 
or  harmony  of  thought  is  not  to  be  ass"med  in  the  works  of  such  an  author. 
I  therefore  incline  to  the  side  of  the  conservative  critics,  who  reject  only  a 
few  of  the  later  idylls,  and  some  of  the  epigrams.  But  the  decision  in 
almost  all  cases  is  one  of  subjective  fancy,  and  therefore  in  no  way  conclu- 
sive. Thus  the  Fishermen  (xviii. )  is  commonly  rejected  because  it  con- 
tains a  moral  lesson  at  the  end,  and  because  love  plays  no  part  in  it  (cf. 
Fritzsche,  in  loc.),  as  if  the  brilliant  I5th  did  not  contradict  such  a  notion. 
For  my  part,  seeing  that  Sophron  wrote  a  6wvod-i]pas,  and  another  mime 
concerning  a  fisherman  and  a  cowherd,  I  accept  it  as  one  of  the  most  cer- 
tainly genuine  of  the  collection.  There  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  objection 
to  the  language  or  to  the  allusions.  The  playing  of  the  fish,  which  greatly 
puzzles  the  Germans,  is  described  with  great  truth,  and  shows  the  poet  to 
have  had  practical  knowledge  of  the  Sicilian  tunny  fishing. 


CH.  XIX.  THEOCRITUS'  IDYLLS.  417 

expressed  in  words,  but  with  truly  artistic  feeling  left  to  be 
inferred  by  the  educated  reader.  There  is  neither  allegory  nor 
apologue  intruded  ;  the  political  or  moral  eclogue  of  Vergil  and 
his  school  is  a  false  imitation  of  these  pictures,  which  from  their 
simplicity,  their  variety,  and  their  novelty,  soon  came  to  be 
designated  by  a  special  name  —  little  pictures,  or  idylls.  The 
term  was  probably  unknown  to  Theocritus  himself,  and  we  are 
not  accurately  informed  of  the  circumstances  of  its  choice. 
But  under  it  both  erotic  poems  concerning  beautiful  youths  — 
some  of  them  in  lyric  metre  —  occasional  poems,  such  as  the 
Spindle  and  the  Epithalamium  of  l  Helen,  epic  pieces,  and 
bucolic  mimes,  are  now  included.  They  are  the  latest  original 
production  in  Greek  poetry,  though,  as  I  have  already  observed, 
their  originality  may  have  been  overrated,  owing  to  the  careless- 
ness of  older,  and  the  ignorance  of  later  critics.  Still  it  were 
unjust,  upon  these  problematical  grounds,  to  deny  Theocritus 
the  noble  position  he  deserves  among  the  great  and  matchless 
masters  of  Greek  poetry,  though  to  him  the  Muse  came  last, 
'  as  to  one  born  out  of  due  season.'  2 

1  This  nuptial  song  is  peculiarly  interesting,  as  perhaps  containing  the 
only  direct  allusion  to  Hebrew  literature  which  is  to  be  found  in  classical 
Greek  poetry.     The  comparison  of  Helen  (v.  30)  to  a  Thessalian  horse  in 
a  chariot,  the  mention  of  4  times  60  maidens,  whom  she  excels,  and  (he 
immediately  following  verses,  in  which  she  is  compared  to  the  Dawn,  pos- 
sibly to  the  moon  (the  text  is  corrupt,  and  variously  restored),  and  to  the 
spring  (vv.  23-8),  have  too  striking  a  resemblance  to  the  Seng  of  Solomon 
(i.  9  ;  vi.  8-10)  to  escape  the  myriad  commentators  on  Theocritus.     It  is 
therefore  suggested  that  he  became  acquainted  with  at  least  part  of  the 
LXX  version  at  Alexandria.     The  strained  and  Oriental  features  in  these 
comparisons  are  best  explained  by  this  hypothesis,  which  is  fairly  borne 
out  by  the  facts,  and  is  of  great  interest  in  literary  history.      If  adopted, 
it   should  be  made  an  argument  against   Meineke's  emendation  of  the 
passage,  which  gets  rid  of  the  night  and  the  moon  altogether. 

2  For  the  benefit  of  younger  students  I  here  quote  a  characteristic 
passage.     Idyll  xi.  vv.  19-29  : 


\evKOTfpa  iraKras  iroriSrjv,  inra\<aTfpa.  apvos, 
fj.6ff^<a  yavpOT€pa,  <ptap<aTfpa  6/j.cpaKOS  u/j.as. 
Qoirfjs  5'  ai50'  ourus,  8/c/ca  y\vKvs  virvos 
olx??  8'  evOi/s  loiaa.,  OKU  y\vKvs  virvos  avy  pe. 
Qfvyfis  8'  &ffirfp  o'is  iro\tbv  Ai'voi/  a 

1  8* 


418  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XIX. 

The  critics  in  his  own  and  the  next  generation  paid  little 
attention  to  a  new  master,  and  not  even  a  master  of  epic 
learning,  like  Apollonius  Rhodius.  Hence  we  only  hear  of 
vTrojuj'j/^araby  Asklepiades,  Nikanor,  Amaranthus,  andTheon  ; 
later  came  Munatus  and  Eratosthenes.  But  none  of  them,  as 
Bernhardy  remarks,  seems  to  have  been  a  formal  commentator, 
and  this  accounts  for  the  poverty  of  our  knowledge  as  to  special 
allusions,  and  as  to  the  models  used  by  the  poet.  In  Byzantine 
days  Moschopoulos  and  Triclinius  made  the  additional  collation 
of  scholia  which  was  not  edited  by  Calliergi  in  his  princeps  of 
the  scholia  (Rome,  1516),  but  by  Warton  and  byAdert  (Zurich, 
1843).  Then  come  the  fuller  editions  of  Gaisford  (Ox.  1820, 
Poetce  Minores,  &c.)  and  of  Diibner  (Paris,  1849).  The  best  and 
fullest  is  now  acknowledged  to  be  Ahrens',  in  the  second  volume 
of  his  Bitcolid  Grtzri  (Leipzig,  1859).  They  are  very  inferior  to 
most  of  our  scholia,  especially  to  those  on  Apollonius,  though 
Theocritus  comes  from  the  same  age  and  of  the  same  school. 

§  248.  Bibliographical.  There  is  a  perfect  host  of  MSS.,  of 
which  the  oldest  and  best  are  the  Ambros.  222  at  Milan,  and  the 
Vatican  912,  both  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  earliest  edition 
is  of  the  first  eighteen  idylls,  probably  at  Milan,  about  1481  ; 
then  comes  that  of  twenty-four  idylls  (with  Hesiod,  Theognis 
&c.)  by  Aldus  (1495),  of  which  there  are  corrected  copies, 
with  some  faulty  sheets  cancelled.  The  first  complete  edition 
with  scholia  was  Calliergi's.  Since  that  time  the  poet  (either 
singly,  or  more  often  with  the  Bitcolid  Grceci)  has  been  con- 
stantly and  ably  edited.  I  mention  as  the  most  remarkable 
editors  Stephens  (an  Oxford  edition  in  1676),  Heinsius  (1604), 
Reiske,  Warton,  Gaisford,  Jacobs  (1824),  Wiistemann  (1830), 
Meineke  (1856),  an  excellent  critical  edition  ;  Briggs  (Camb. 
1821),  Wordsworth  (iterum  ed.  1877),  Ameis  (Didot,  1846), 
Ahrens  (1855-9),  Ziegler  (ed.  iil  1877),  with  an  independent 
collation  of  Italian  MSS.,  and  the  two  editions  of  Fritzsche 


e-ywya  rtovs,  fcdpa,  api/ca  Trparov 
?tv8es  ffjiS.  avv  i^arpl,  0t\oiff'  vajcivQiva.  <f>v\\a. 
c|  upeos  $pfya<T0ai  '  £y&>  6'  6$bv  a,yffj.6vevov. 
ira.vffaffda.i  8'  effiSwv  TV  Kal  vartpov  ovS'  tri  irw  vvv 
fK  r-fjvca   Si'rauac   T\V  5'  ov  fj.f\tt}  ov  /ta  Ai',  ovStf. 


CH.  xix.     TRANSLATIONS  OF  THEOCRITUS.  419 

(with  German  notes,  Leipzig,  1857,  and  more  full  and  critical, 
1865-9,  in  two  vols.,  with  a  third  on  MSS.  scholia,  &c., 
promised,  but  not  yet  published).  For  English  readers  there  is, 
in  addition  to  Bishop  Wordsworth's  Latin  Commentary,  a  handy 
but  too  brief  edition  by  Mr.  F.  A.  Paley  (1863).  Young 
scholars  want  help  in  the  dialect,  which  is  at  first  very  puzzling, 
and  for  this  I  recommend  Fritzsche's  earlier  edition,  which  has 
a  good  glossary  of  forms,  and  also  excellent  botanical  notes  on 
the  very  prominent  Flora  of  the  bucolics — neither  of  which  is 
repeated,  but  only  referred  to,  in  his  larger  edition.  This  latter 
is,  moreover,  weighed  down  with  ponderous  learning,  and  on 
many  hard  passages  revokes  the  reading  or  rendering  of  his 
former  edition.  Nevertheless,  for  the  bibliography  of  Theo- 
critus, and  for  summaries  of  various  opinions,  it  is  the  most 
recent  and  the  fullest.  I  specially  refer  to  it,  as  monographs, 
or  partial  editions,  are  too  numerous  and  special  for  mention 
here.  Rumpel's  Lexicon  Theocriteum  (1879)  is  the  newest 
and  best  analysis  of  the  vocabulary  of  the  poet.  There  are 
French  translations  by  Didot,  German  by  Voss  (1808),  Hart- 
ung  (with  notes,  1858),  and  especially  by  the  p'oet  Riickert 
(1867).  In  English  we  have  first  Thos.  Creech  (Oxon,  1684), 
a  rymed  version  in  the  style  of  that  day ;  then  Banks'  prose 
version  (Bohn,  1853).1  In  our  own  day  J.  H.  Chapman 
(London,  1866)  has  produced  a  good  and  careful  translation  of 
all  Theocritus,  with  Bion  and  Moschus,  with  many  good  notes 
on  the  imitations  of  early  English  poets.  But  this  scholarly 
work  is  not  equal  to  C.  S.  Calverly's  (Cambridge,  1869),  which 
is  one  of  the  best  English  versions  of  any  Greek  author.  If 
Mr.  Calverly  had  not  made  his  book  a  drawing-room  volume, 
it  would  doubtless  have  been  a  far  closer  version  of  the  original. 
The  Eclogues  of  Vergil,  and  the  pastorals  of  Sannazaro  and  his 
school,  of  the  German  Gesner,  and  of  the  Spaniaids,  prove  the 
lasting  effect  of  Theocritus  on  the  literature  of  the  world,  nor  is 
there  any  other  poet  to  whom  our  Laureate  owes  so  much. 

§  249.  A  word  may  be  here  added  concerning  Bitm  and 
Moschus,  whose  remains  are  preserved  with  the  MSS.  of  Theo- 
critus, and  printed  after  his  idylls  in  most  of  our  editions.  These 

1  Unfortunately  Mr.  A.  Lang's  prose  version  is  privately  printed. 


420  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XIX. 

poets  are  somewhat  later  than  Theocritus  in  age  ;  Bion  was  born 
near  Smyrna,  but  lived  in  Sicily,  and  died  of  poison  before 
Moschus,  whose  longest  poem  is  an  exaggerated  lament  over  his 
friend  and  perhaps  master ;  Moschus  himself  is  set  down  in 
Suidas  as  an  acquaintance  of  Aristarchus.  More  we  cannot  de- 
termine. We  find  the  term  /3oi/k-oXoc  and  fiovKo\ia.aci\v  used  by 
Moschus  technically  for  poets  and  poetry,  in  a  sense  far  removed 
from  their  original  simplicity  in  Theocritus.  The  remains  of 
both  poets  are,  perhaps,  best  in  their  epic  vein,  and  concerning 
this  side  I  have  spoken  above.  The  Lament  on  Adonis  of  Bion, 
and  the  Lament  on  Bion  of  Moschus,  are  both  elaborate,  and 
with  refrains  in  bucolic  form,  but  artificial  and  exaggerated. 
Their  erotic  fragments  remind  one  of  the  false  anacreontic 
fragments,  which  Thos.  Moore  has  made  so  familiar  to  us. 
The  urchin  Eros  with  his  rosy  wings,  his  mischievous  temper, 
and  his  waywardness,  is  manifestly  the  Alexandrian,  not  the  old 
Greek  god.  Hermann  and  Ziegler  have  critically  edited  the  frag- 
mentary and  corrupt  remains  of  these  poets,  and  there  have  not 
been  wanting  modern  imitations,  such  as  the  well-known — 

Suns  that  set,  and  moons  that  wane, 
Rise  and  are  restored  again  ; 
Stars  that  orient  day  subdues, 
Night  at  her  return  renews,  &c.' 

The  history  of  the  rise  in  modern  literature  of  an  ideal 
Arcadia — the  home  of  piping  shepherds  and  coy  shepherdesses, 
where  rustic  simplicity  and  plenty  satisfied  the  ambition  of 
untutored  hearts,  and  where  ambition  and  its  crimes  were 
unknown — is  a  very  curious  one,  and  has,  I  think,  been  first 
traced  in  the  chapter  on  Arcadia  in  my  Rambles  and  Studies  in 
Greece.  Neither  Theocritus  nor  his  early  imitators  laid  the 
scene  of  their  poems  in  Arcadia ;  this  imaginary  frame  was 
first  adopted  by  Sannazaro. 

1  Here  is  the  original  :  — 

Ala?  ral  fia\dxai  /uti/  tira.v  Kara  KO.ITOV  S\uvTail 
•j)&€  TO  x^P^  <ff\iva  rb  r'  fvda\fs  ov\ov  avrjOov, 
vffTtpov  aS  £u>ovTt  Kal  els  eras  a\\o  <f><jovri  • 
&fj./j.es  8'  ol  fj.fyd\oi  Kal  Kaprtpoi,  ol  <ro<f>ol  avSpes, 
6inr6Te  irpara  Odvwjifs,  O.VO.KOOI  tv  j(6ov\  Ko(A<y 
fvSofjifs  tv  /ioAa  fjiOLKp'ov  arfp^ova  vfiypfTov  Zirvov. 


CHAPTER  -XX. 

THE   OLD   ATTIC   COMEDY  UP   TO   ARISTOPHANES. 

§  250.  WE  have  now  disposed  of  the  older  Doric  comedy, 
with  its  later  Siciliot  and  Italiot  offshoots.  It  was  certainly 
more  primitive  than  its  Attic  sister  ;  it  was  also  spread  over  a 
greater  surface  and  a  longer  period  of  the  Hellenic  world,  but 
perhaps  for  this  very  reason  was  loose  and  varying  in  form,  and 
did  not  attain  to  any  fixed  type,  or  any  splendid  tradition. 
The  very  opposite  was  the  cass  with  Attic  comedy.  Starting 
from  an  equally  obscure  origin,  it  attained  in  democratic  Athens 
such  a  strict  and  formal  development,  it  answered  such  great 
political  and  artistic  purposes,  that  no  remnant  of  Greek  litera- 
ture has  attained  a  more  lasting  and  universal  fame. 

All  the  old  grammarians  and  writers  about  comedy  associ- 
ate it  directly  with  the  Athenian  democracy,  which  alone,  they 
think,  would  tolerate  its  outspoken  and  personal  character. 
This,  indeed,  is  so  distinctive  a  feature,  that  it  comes  out  in 
the  traditions  of  its  first  origin.  We  constantly  find  the  story 
repeated  that  the  country  people  in  Attica,  when  injured  by 
their  town  neighbours,  used  to  come  in  at  night,  and  sing  per- 
sonal lampoons  at  the  doors  of  their  aggressors,  so  as  to  bring 
the  crime  home  to  them,  and  excite  public  censure  against 
them — that  this  practice  was  found  so  useful  that  it  was  for- 
mally legalised,  and  that  the  accusers  disguised  themselves  with 
wine  lees  for  fear  of  consequences  to  themselves.  These 
accounts  prove  at  least  how  indissolubly  personal  censure  was 
associated  with  old  Attic  comedy.  It  is  a  further  confirmation 
of  this  remark,  that  though  Susarion  was  said  to  have  intro- 
duced comedy  from  Megara  very  early,  it  was  not  tolerated 
under  the  personal  government  of  the  Pisistratidse,  and  only 


422  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xx. 

revived  when  democracy  had  made  its  outspokenness— its 
irapf>rinia — secure.  Other  obscure  names,  such  as  Euetes  and 
Euexenides,  are  alluded  to  as  of  the  same  date,  and  altogether 
it  seems  likely  that  as  the  old  Attic  comedy  faded  out  with  the 
greatness  of  the  Athenian  democracy  at  the  end  of  the  fourth 
century,  so  it  originated  with  its  origin  just  before  the  Persian 
Wars.  But  until  the  climax  under  the  direction  of  Pericles, 
it  seems  barely  to  have  existed,  and  as  an  obscure  appendage 
of  the  Dionysiac  revelry.  There  were  no  written  texts,  no 
fixed  plots,  no  artistic  finish.  Licentious  jokes  and  personal 
jibes  were  its  only  features,  so  that  the  first  great  organiser 
(Cratinus)  is  said  to  have  abandoned  its  lapftiKi]  Icia,  or  like- 
ness to  the  satire  of  Archilochus  both  in  form  and  style,  and 
its  extant  master  (Aristophanes)  boasts  that  he  has  risen  above 
the  vulgar  obscenities  of  the  old  Megarian  farce.  Still  both 
elements  are  manifest  enough  in  the  comedies  of  Aristophanes, 
though  ennobled  by  political  censure  and  social  grace  ;  so  that 
we  may  fairly  hold  the  whole  type  to  be  adequately  represented 
in  the  eleven  extant  plays. 

But  the  numerous  fragments  give  us  no  definite  idea  of  either 
plot  or  literary  execution.  This  is,  indeed,  a  most  remarkable 
feature  in  the  old  Attic  comedy.  Were  we  reduced  to  judge 
Aristophanes  from  the  fragments  of  his  lost  plays,  we  should 
have  no  nction  whatever  of  his  greatness,  and  for  this  reason 
critics  are  to  be  blamed,  who  have  extolled  him  at  the  expense 
of  his  rivals,  who  are  known  to  us  only  in  this  utterly  inadequate 
way.  It  is  nevertheless  certain,  from  the  evidence  of  the  ancients 
who  had  all  the  documents  complete,  that  he  was  indeed  the 
greatest  of  Attic  comedians.  We  will  therefore  discuss  the 
general  scope  and  character  of  old  Attic  comedy  in  connection 
with  this  typical  genius,  as  soon  as  we  have  given  a  rapid  sketch 
of  his  lesser  known  predecessors  and  rivals. 

§  251.  We  are  told  that  at  first  the  comedians  were  distinctly 
licensed  by  the  law  to  make  personal  attacks — a  statement  re- 
peated by  Cicero  l  and  Themistius.  but  which  may  have  arisen 
from  the  supposition  that  there  must  be  a  law  to  permit,  as  well 
as  a  law  to  restrain,  libel  of  individuals.  For  this  latter  law  was 

1  De  Rep.  iv.  10. 


CH.  xx.  EARLY  COMIC  WRITERS.  423 

certainly  enacted  under  the  Archonship  of  Morychides  (85,  i;,» 
and  lasted  three  years,  when  it  was  repealed.  A  similar  re- 
straint seems  to  have  been  imposed  again  in  Ol.  91,  i,1  and 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  oligarchs  of  411  B.C.  silenced 
political  comedy,  if  not  by  law,  at  least  by  terror.  It  flashed 
up  again  at  the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  as  we  know 
from  Aristophanes'  ftvgs,  to  succumb  finally  to  the  thirty 
tyrants,  and  the  impoverished  and  timid  times  which  followed, 
when  the  Athenians  had  no  wealth  to  adorn,  or  spirits  to  enjoy, 
the  comic  chorus — the  real  pith  and  backbone  of  the  old  poli- 
tical comedy.  Thus  the  period  of  its  greatness  is  confined  to 
an  ordinary  human  life,  some  sixty  years,  reaching  from  Ol.  80 
to  Ol.  96.  Towards  the  close  of  this  epoch  constant  attempts 
were  made,  by  such  men  as  the  dithyrambist  Kinesias,  and  the 
demagogue  Agyrrhios,  to  curtail  the  public  outlay  upon  comedy, 
and  hence  impair  its  dignity.  These  facts  as  to  the  history  of 
the  relation  of  the  state  to  comedy  are  chiefly  attested  by  the 
excellent  scholia  on  Aristophanes,  from  which  they  have  been 
gathered  and  illustrated  with  infinite  learning  by  Meineke 
We  may  infer  the  relative  expenses  of  bringing  out  a  tragedy 
and  a  comedy  by  the  fact  that  in  the  year  410  B.C.  a  tragic 
chorus  cost  3,000  drachmes,  whereas  in  402  B.C.  a  comic  chorus 
cost  only  1,600.  This  latter  was,  however,  in  the  poorest  days 
of  Athens,  and  after  many  attacks  had  been  made  on  the  outlay 
for  what  had  become  a  mere  idle  amusement ;  so  that  these 
facts  (quoted  by  Klein  from  Boeckh)  are  not  so  conclusive  as 
might  appear. 

§  252.  Passing  by  Myllus,  who  has  been  already  mentioned 
(p.  400),  and  who  is  probably  not  a  member  of  the  Attic  branch, 
we  come  to  CHIONIDES  (Xtwr/c^c  is  the  form  preferred  by  Mei- 
neke to  Xtoj'/cijc),  whose  date  is  placed  too  early  in  Suidas,  and 
who  probably  composed  his  plays  about  Ol.  80.  Three  titles, 
the  fleroes,  the  Persians  or  Assyrians,  and  the  doubtful  Beggars 

1  This  second  decree  (of  Syracosius)  is  justly  inferred  by  Droysen  to 
have  had  special  reference  to  those  then  charged  with  profanation  of  the  mys- 
teries, and  to  have  restrained  comic  satire,  as  likely  to  prejudice  the  courts 
against  them.  As  the  old  comedy  always  treated  the  events  of  the  day,  such 
a  provision  would  deprive  it  of  its  main  interest.  Cf.  Meineke,  FCG.  ii. 
p.  949. 


424  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XX. 

(Trrw^o/),  are  named.  Aristotle  speaks  of  him,  along  with 
Magnes,  as  much  later  than  Epicharmus.  We  know  nothing 
of  him  save  a  very  few  fragments,  which  tell  us  only  the 
fact  that  he  was  acknowledged  the  earliest  of  the  proper  Attic 
comedians.  The  name  of  MAGNES,  which  comes  next  in  the 
list,  is  more  important,  and  he  is  mentioned  in  the  celebrated 
parabasis  of  Aristophanes'  Knights  !  as  having  once  been  very 
popular,  but  in  his  old  age  failing  to  please,  and  neglected 
by  a  once  friendly  public.  He  was  therefore  dead,  and  had 
died  in  old  age,  when  this  play  was  brought  out,  Ol.  88,  4. 
We  may  consequently  place  his  activity  about  Ol.  80.  He 
came  from  the  Icarian  deme,  like  Thespis,  and  won  many 
victories.  The  nine  titles  of  his  plays  which  survive  are  sus- 
pected, and  perhaps  retouched  or  modified  by  other  hands. 
We  hear  of  a  Birds  and  a  Frogs  among  them,  and  it  appears 
from  Aristophanes'  allusion  that  the  chorus  (as  in  Aristophanes 
himself)  imitated  the  sounds  of  both.  There  is  also  a  FaXeo- 
fivofia-^la  cited  as  his,  which  seems  a  strange  title  for  an  Attic 
comedy,  but  not  stranger  than  Cratinus'  parody  of  the 
Odyssey. 

There  is  hardly  so  much  known  ot  ECPHANTIDES,  nick- 
named KoTrriac  by  his  rivals,  by  way  of  comic  contrast  to  his 
real  name.  We  hear  that  he  had  a  definite  chorus  assigned  to 
him,  and  that  he  attacked  a  certain  Androcles,  also  attacked  by 
Cratinus.  These  facts  show  us  that  his  age  was  about  that  of 
Magnes.  We  hear  of  only  one  title  of  his  plays,  the  Satyrs,  a 
subject  treated  by  other  comic  poets,  but  we  have  unfor- 
tunately no  data  for  a  comparison  with  the  standing  scenery  of 
the  properly  satyric  dramas,  which  seem  so  near  and  yet  so 
separate  from  comedy. 

§  253.  We  now  come  to  CRATINUS,  the  real  originator — 
the  ^Eschylus — of  political  comedy.  This  was  the  opinion 
of  ihe  sensible  grammarian  quoted  in  Meineke.2  '  Those,' 
he  says,  'who  first  in  Attica  constructed  the  general  scheme 
of  comedy  (Susarion  and  his  companions)  brought  in  their 
characters  without  method  (a-rkrwc),  and  placed  no  object 
before  tnem  but  to  excite  laughter.  But  when  Cratinus  took 
'  w.  520,  sq.  2  i.  p.  540. 


CH  xx.  CRATINUS.  42$ 

it  up,  he  first  established  a  limit  of  three  in  the  characters 
of  comedy,  thus  correcting  the  irregularity  ;  and,  moreover,  he 
added  a  serious  moral  object  to  the  mere  amusement  in 
comedy,  by  reviling  evil  doers,  and  chastising  them  with  his 
comedy,  as  it  were  with  a  public  scourge.  Nevertheless,  even 
he  shows  traces  of  earliness,  and  even  slightly  of  want  of 
method.'  This  invaluable  notice  is  supported  both  by  the 
fragments  of  Cratinus,  and  by  the  observations  upon  him 
in  various  scholia.  He  is  called  the  son  of  Callimades,  and 
if  he  was  really  '  taxiarch  of  the  tribe  (Eneis/  l  must  have 
been  a  man  of  some  means.  This  is  corroborated  by  his 
policy,  which  was  distinctly  conservative  and  aristocratic,  and 
opposed  to  that  of  Pericles.  As  he  is  said  to  have  lived  ninety- 
seven  years,  and  brought  out  his  last  play  in  Ol.  89,  i,  his 
birth  may  be  placed  about  520  B.C.  ;  but  there  is  some  evi- 
dence that  his  genius  was  late  in  development,  for  we  do 
not  know  that  he  won  any  victory  earlier  than  his  Archilochi 
in  Ol.  82,  4  (452  B.C.),  if  not  later.  Aristophanes  says  2  he 
died  of  grief  at  the  loss  of  a  jar  of  wine,  when  the  Lacedaemo- 
dians  invaded  Attica.  But  both  fact  and  date  are  invented, 
for  we  know  of  no  invasion  which  will  harmonize  with  our 
other  information.  When  Aristophanes  had  ridiculed  him 
in  the  Knights  3  as  a  broken-down  old  man,  who  had  once  been 
the  popular  poet,  so  that  every  society  rang  with  songs  from 
his  plays,  the  aged  Cratinus  is  said  to  have  given  a  practical 
reply  by  composing  his  famous  Wineflask  (\\vrivi\\  which  gained 
the  victory  over  his  detractor's  Clouds,  as  well  as  over  an 
obscurer  play  of  Ameipsias,  the  Connos,  which  took  the  second 
prize.  Shortly  after  this  he  died.  He  composed  but  little, 
as  only  twenty-one  plays  are  attributed  to  him,  nine  of  which 
won  the  first  prize ;  but  the  impetuous  flow  of  his  verse,  and 
the  alleged  looseness  of  his  plots  towards  their  close,  rather 

1  In  an  excellent  note  on  the  total  absence  of  humour,  or  the  appre- 
ciation of  it,  in  most  German  authors,    Grote   (viii.  456)   observes    that 
this  statement,  preserved  by  Suidas  (sub  voc.  'Eicfiov  SeiArfrepoj),  is  plainly 
a  joke   £  prnpos  of  the  poet's  over-fondness  for  wine.     Nevertheless  it 
is  still  being  repeated  solemnly  by  the  Germans. 

2  Pax,  v.  700.  3  v.  528. 


426  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xx. 

point  to  idleness  and  over-conviviality  (as  he  admitted  in  the 
Hvrivri)  than  to  slowness  of  production,  as  the  cause  of  so  scanty 
a  record  of  his  life's  work.  Furthermore,  it  has  long  since 
been  observed  that  the  writers  of  the  old  comedy  were  far  less 
prolific  than  their  tragic  contemporaries,  who  doubtless  wrote 
a  trilogy  of  their  somewhat  conventional  plays  on  well-known 
plots  in  less  time  than  the  comic  poets  took  to  elaborate  their 
more  imaginative  dramas.  The  titles  of  all  Cratinus'  plays 
survive,  and  some  270  fragments  are  quoted  from  17  of  them, 
besides  180  citations  of  uncertain  place  in  his  works.  Yet  it 
is  melancholy  how  little  all  this  material,  on  which  Meineke 
gives  us  200  pages,  tells  us  of  his  genius.  The  plot  of  only  one, 
the  Uvrii'tj,  is  even  approximately  known,  in  which  the  aged 
poet  represented  himself  as  lawfully  wedded  to  Comedy,  but 
given  to  neglecting  her  for  her  rival  Inebriety,  so  that  Comedy 
brings  an  action  for  desertion  against  him,  and  discusses  with  his 
friends  her  sad  case. 

The  attacks  on  Pericles  (in  the  Qpdr-at  and  Xeipuvcc),  and 
the  praise  of  Kimon  (in  the  'Apxi^wX°0»  are  ver7  prominent, 
and  so  are  scurrilous  attacks  on  various  poets  and  rivals, 
among  whom  he  twits  Aristophanes  with  over-subtlety  and 
pedantry.  It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  he  at  times  treated  of 
mythical  subjects  and  of  literary  criticism,  as  in  his  Nt'^eo-tc 
(birth  of  Helen),  Sepi'^io,-,  Rowlpic,  and  'ApxiXoxpi,  in  which 
Homer  and  Hesiod,  as  well  as  later  poets,  were  brought  in  ; 
his  'O<W<7»7e  W2-S  a  parody  of  the  Odyssey,  which  is  noted  as  not 
having  even  a  parabasis  or  choric  songs,  though  fr.  15  shows  his 
chorus  to  have  been  of  Ithacan  sailors.  Many  of  his  fragments 
also  paint  the  happiness  of  a  long  past  golden  age,  either  mythi- 
cally under  Cronos,  or  ideally  in  the  old  Attic  times — a  subject 
on  which  Athenseus  has  collected  many  interesting  quotations. l 

The  general  impression  produced  by  the  rags  and  tatters  of 
this  great  poet  is  very  similar  to  that  which  we  form  on  fuller 
grounds  of  Aristophanes.  There  is  the  same  terse  rigour,  the 
same  unsparing  virulence,  the  same  Attic  grace  and  purity,  nor 
need  we  at  all  wonder  that  he  was  held  worthy  by  the  Athe- 
nians of  a  higher  place  than  his  great  rival  on  more  than  one 
1  vi.  p.  267. 


CH.  XX.  CRATES  AND  PHERECRATES.  427 

occasion.  But  we  may  reserve  any  remarks  upon  the  moral  and 
political  intent  of  his  plays,  until  we  come  to  discuss  the  deep 
and  serious  aim  attributed  to  the  old  comedy  by  grammarians 
and  modern  critics. 

§  254.  CRATES  was  a  younger  contemporary  of  Cratinus,  and 
is  said  to  have  been  at  first  his  actor.  He  is  noticed  by  Aristotle 
(in  the  Poetic)  as  having  adopted  the  style  of  Epicharmus 
and  Phormis,  and  abstained  from  personal  satire,  while  con- 
fining himself  to  the  portraiture  of  types.  He  composed 
between  Ol.  82,  4  and  88,  4.  Aristophanes  notices  his  career 
in  the  passage  from  the  Knights,  already  so  often  quoted. 
Fourteen  titles  of  his  plays  are  cited,  of  which  only  eight  are 
thought  certain  by  Meineke.  The  fragments  of  the  0//pta,  in 
which  the  golden  age  was  painted  with  animated  and  docile 
furniture  instead  of  slaves,  and  without  animal  food  (the 
chorus  of  beasts  protested  against  it),  are  interesting.  The 
stray  lines  quoted  by  Stobseus  have  a  curiously  gentle  and 
moderate  tone  about  them. 

PHERECRATES  conies  next,  and  of  his  life  we  know  nothing 
but  that  he  too  had  been  an  actor,  and  was  victorious  as  a 
comic  poet  in  Ol.  85,  3.  Of  the  plays  ascribed  to  him, 
thirteen  titles  seem  genuine.  He  also,  though  his  extant  frag- 
ments contain  personal  attacks  on  Alcibiades,  Melanthius  the 
tragic  poet,  and  others,  is  said  by  an  anonymous  author  on 
comedy  to  have  imitated  Crates  in  avoiding  personal  abuse, 
and  to  have  been  remarkable  for  the  invention  of  new  plots  ; 
in  fact,  to  have  been  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  as  it  is  called. 
More  than  200  fragments  remain,  some  of  those  quoted  by 
Athenaeus  being  very  elegant,  and  showing  the  refined  Atticism 
of  the  poet.  He  spoke  much  of  social  vices,  of  gluttony  and 
drunkenness,  and  of  luxury,  and  named  more  than  one  play 
after  a  hdtzra.  The  Cheiron,  if  it  be  his,  and  other  plays, 
contained  great  complaints  about  innovations  in  music,  on 
which  a  remarkable  fragment  remains.  The  Wild-men  (aypioi), 
brought  out  in  Ol.  89,  4,  painted  the  innocence  of  a  state  of 
nature,  while  the  u-yaOol  r/rot  upyvpov  a0o»'to-^oc  satirised  the 
spendthrift  vices  of  the  better  classes  at  Athens.  He  also 
originated  the  idea  of  a  play  with  scenes  in 


428  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XX. 

in  which  ^Eschylus  appeared — an  idea  so  splendidly  appro- 
priated in  Aristophanes'  frogs.  Some  of  his  fragments  might 
have  been  written  by  Menander,  so  modern  and  world-weary 
do  they  appear. 

TELECLEIDES  and  HERMIPPUS  are  both  cited  by  Plutarch  for 
their  attacks  on  Pericles,  the  former  (fr.  incert.  4)  complains  of 
the  absolute  favour  shown  him  by  the  Athenians  ;  the  latter 
charges  him  with  lust  and  cowardice.  They  painted,  like  all  their 
compeers,  pictures  of  the  golden  age,  but  chiefly  from  a  gour- 
mand point  of  view,  the  lines  from  Teleclides'  Amphictyon* 
being  particularly  good.  He  praises  Nikias,  and  mentions  Mnesi- 
lochus  and  Socrates  as  helping  Euripides  in  his  plays ;  Her- 
mippus  alludes  to  Cleon,  so  that  both  poets  must  have  lived 
to  see  the  so-called  ochlocracy.  The  iambics  of  Hermip- 
pus  have  been  noticed  above  (p.  196).  Even  in  him  there 
are  traces  of  mythological  plays,  and  in  his  *op/zo<popoi  re- 
markable hexameter  passages  which  smack  of  parody — one  of 
them  on  the  various  produce  of  the  Mediterranean  coasts 
(fr.  i),  the  other  on  the  comparative  merit  of  various  wines 
(fr.  2). 

§  255.  There  are  many  other  contemporaries  of  Aristophanes, 
who  were  even  at  times  successful  against  him,  but  who  need  not 
be  here  fully  enumerated.  Philonides,  who  undertook  the  per- 
formances of  Aristophanes'  Daitaleis  and  frogs,  was  himself  the 
author  of  a  play  called  KtiOopvot,  the  buskins,  in  which  he  lam- 
pooned Theramenes.  Ameipsias  defeated  Aristophanes'  Clouds 
and  Birds  with  his  Connos  and  Revellers.  Nine  of  his  come- 
dies are  named.  Archippus  was  the  author  of  an  'lytovq  or 
Fishmarket  comedy,  and  of  an  Amphitryo,  which  Plautus  may 
have  imitated.  Phrynichus,  the  son  of  Eunomides,  is  often  con- 
founded with  the  son  of  Polyphradmon,  the  tragic  writer,  also 
with  a  certain  military  man,  and  perhaps  with  a  dancer — the 
name  being  apparently  very  common.  This  comic  poet  en- 
joyed a  high  reputation.  Of  the  ten  tragedies  attributed  to  him 
the  Revellers  contained  allusions  to  the  affair  of  the  Hermse, 
his  Monotropos  (Ol.  91,  2)  was  on  a  misanthrope,  of  the  type 
of  Timon ;  his  Muses  stood  second  to  Aristophanes'  Frogs 
(01.  93,  2)  and  contained  a  celebrated  eulogium  on  Sophocles. 


CH.  xx.  EUPOLIS.  429 

I  will  here  add  Plato,  the  latest  poet  who  seems  to  me  truly  of 
the  old  comedy,  and  often  classed  with  the  middle  on  account 
of  his  date,1  for  he  flourished  from  Ol.  88  to  Ol.  97  at  least, 
when  the  political  aspects  of  comedy  had  disappeared.  Never- 
theless no  poet  is  more  prominent  in  his  attacks  upon  all  the 
demagogues,  beginning  with  Cleon,  and  writing  distinct  plays 
upon  Cleophon  and  Hyperbolus.  He  is  said  to  have  attacked 
even  Peisander  and  Antiphon,  the  leaders  of  the  aristocratic 
reaction  in  411  B.C.,  but  this  seems  to  me  more  than  doubtful. 
He  was,  for  a  comic  writer,  rather  prolific,  twenty-eight  plays 
being  ascribed  to  him.  The  reader  who  desires  to  know  all  that 
can  be  said  about  them  may  wade  through  the  laborious 
volumes  of  Meineke,  and  there  are  doubtless  many  hints  con- 
cerning the  politics,  the  literature  and  the  social  life  of  the 
period  to  be  drawn  from  the  scanty  remnants  left  to  us.  But 
as  literature,  these  scraps  are  only  valuable  in  showing  us  the 
development  of  that  pure  Attic  diction,  which  reached  its  per- 
fection about  this  time. 

§  256.  But  before  we  proceed  to  discuss  the  general  points 
concerning  the  position  of  comedy,  as  Aristophanes  found  it, 
we  must  expand  this  dry  enumeration  by  adding  yet  one 
name,  but  a  name  of  greater  importance  than  any  which  we 
have  yet  mentioned  in  this  field — I  mean  that  of  Aristo- 
phanes' fellow  poet  and  rival,  EUPOLIS.  This  man,  the  son  of 
Sosipolis,  was  born  at  Athens  Ol.  83,  3  (449  B.C.),  and  wrote 
his  first  play  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  a  most  unusual  precocious- 
ness,  of  which  Antiphanes  and  Menander  are  also  examples. 
A  scholiast  on  Aristophanes2  says  there  was  a  law  against 
any  poet  bringing  out  a  comedy  before  the  age  of  thirty,  but 
this  I  suppose  means  that  the  state  would  not  undergo  the 
expense  of  a  chorus  for  a  young  and  untried  candidate,  and 
hence  the  comic  poets  generally  brought  out  their  early  plays 
under  other  people's  names,  and  also  began  as  actors  for 
elder  poets.  Eupolis  is  said  to  have  been  drowned  in  one 

1  The  fact  that  some  of  his  plays,  like  the  P/iaon,  had  the  character  of 
the  middle  comedy,  is  an  argument  of  no  value,  as  there  is  hardly  a  single 
poet  of  the  old  comedy  of  whom  such  a  statement  would  not  be  true. 

2  Nub.   526. 


430  HISTORY  OF  CREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.xx. 

of  the  battles  in  the  Hellespont,1  probably  Kynossema  (410 
B.C.),  and  with  the  connivance  or  assistance  of  Alcibiades, 
who  hated  him  for  his  political  satire.  This  fact  has  even  been 
expanded  into  a  story  that  Alcibiades  when  sailing  to  Sicily  had 
him  drowned,2  with  a  joke  retorting  the  term  (/SaTrrcu)  under 
which  the  poet  had  ridiculed  some  profligate  young  aristocrats 
of  his  set.  Of  his  life  we  know  nothing  more  except  some  anec- 
dotes about  his  faithful  dog,  and  his  faithless  slave,  Ephialtes, 
who  was  charged  with  stealing  his  comedies.  The  attempts  of 
Platonius  and  others  to  characterise  Eupolis  as  a  poet  are 
hopelessly  vague,  either  from  the  confusion  of  the  writers  or  the 
corruption  of  the  texts.  They  compare  and  contrast  him  with 
Cratinus  and  Aristophanes,  but  not  in  accordance  with  either 
the  extant  fragments  or  any  intelligible  theory.  That  he  was 
brilliant  in  his  wit,  and  refined  in  his  style,  is  plain  from  the  fact 
that  he  co-operated  with  Aristophanes  in  his  Knights,  of  which 
the  last  parabasis,  beginning  from  v.  1290,  is  recorded  by  the 
scholiast  to  have  been  his  composition.  He  afterwards  may 
have  quarrelled  with  Aristophanes,  for  they  satirised  one  an- 
other freely.  In  style  and  in  genius  he  stood  nearest  to  his 
great  rival,  and  his  comedies  seem  to  have  possessed  most,  if 
not  all,  of  the  features  which  make  the  Aristophanic  comedy 
so  peculiar  in  literature.  He  was  witty,  coarse,  unsparing,  in- 
ventive both  in  diction  and  in  scenic  effects,  and  appears  to 
have  pursued  the  same  relentless  opposition  policy  against  the 
democratic  party  and  their  aristocratic  leaders. 

At  least  fourteen  of  the  titles  ascribed  to  him  appea-r  to  be 
genuine.  His  Goats  had  a  chorus  of  goats,  and  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  so  political  as  his  other  plays.  The  fragments  have 
a  rustic  and  bucolic  complexion.  The  Autolycus  was  a  satire  on 
a  youth  of  great  beauty  and  accomplishments,  the  favourite  of 
the  rich  Callias,  and  also  known  to  us  from  Xenophon's 
Symposium.  This  play  came  out  in  Ol.  89,  4,  under  the 
management  of  Demostratus.  Callias  himself  and  his  Sophist 
friends  were  treated  in  the  Flatterers  (Ol.  89,  3),  in  which  he 

1  It  is  said  that  in  consequence  the  Athenians  made  a  law  that  poets 
should  be  exempt  from  military  service. 

2  Cf.  Cicero  Ad  Att.  vi.  I  in  refutation  of  the  story. 


CH.  xx.  EUPOLIS'  PLA  YS.  431 

figured  like  the  Timon  of  Shakspeare,  at  the  opening  of  the  play. 
The  Barren  ridiculed  the  worship  of  Cotytto  for  its  ribaldry  and 
obscenity,  probably  in  Ol.  91,  i,  before  the  Sicilian  expedition. 
There  is  no  good  evidence  that  Alcibiades  was  lampooned  in 
this  play,  as  is  usually  asserted.  We  must  deeply  regret  the  loss 
of  the  A///UOI  (about  Ol.  91,  4),  in  which  Nikias  and  Myronides 
were  represented  as  questioning  the  great  old  politicians,  who 
had  come  back  from  the  dead,  and  lamenting  the  condition  of 
the  state.  Solon,  Peisistratus,  Miltiades,  Aristeides,  and  Kimon 
appeared,  and  so  did  Pericles,1  who  asked  many  questions  con- 
cerning his  son  and  the  prospects  of  Athens.  The  youth  and 
inexperience  of  the  newer  generals  were  especially  censured. 
A  parallel  play  was  the  ITo/\£tc,  in  which  the  personified  tribu- 
tary cities  formed  the  chorus.  His  Mr»p<«tc  (Ol.  89,  4)  attacked 
Hyperbolus,  and  the  play  was  charged  by  Aristophanes 2  with 
plagiarism  from  his  Knights.  The  HpoffiruX-iot  seems  to  have 
attacked  the  litigiousness  of  the  people  of  that  deme.  In  the 
Taxiarchs  the  celebrated  admiral  Phormio  played  a  leading 
part,  and  seems  to  have  undertaken  the  naval  training  of  Dio- 
nysus, who  objects  greatly  to  any  hardships.  In  the  Golden 
Age  he  exhibited,  like  all  his  contemporaries,  pictures  of  a  re- 
turn to  a  primitive  state  of  innocence  and  peace.3 

1  The  description  of  Pericles'  eloquence  is  happily  preserved  to  us. 

o.  Kpdriffros  ovros  eyfver'  avOptiirttiv  \eyeiv, 
oirorf  irape\6ot,  x^ff'lrep  ayaGol  Spo/j.r}s 
IK  Sfita  iroScav  jfpei  \fywv  rovs  priropas. 

/3.  Tax^v  \eyeis  /ueV,  irpbs  Se  y'  avrov  rf  ro^st 

ovrws  ^KTjAei,  Kal  fj.6vos  rtav  pnir6p<av 
rb  Kevrpov  tyKare\(iire  ro'is  aKpocafifvots. 
:  Nub.  w.  553-5- 

•  The  other  titles  are  'Aa-rpdrfvroi,  NOU^TJVI'GU,  *i'Aoi.     I  add  a  remark* 
able  fragment  : 

'AAA'  a.Kov*r\  S>  Qearai,  iroAAa  Kal  £vvifre 
p-fj/jLar* '  evOv  yap  irpbs  v/n.as  irpHrov  d.iro\oyria'0fj.ai, 
'6  ri  fi.ad6vrfs  rovs  £evovs  jusi/  \eyere  iroiriras  o~o<povsf 
ftv  8e  ris  riav  ej'^ct?',  avrov  /I7j5e  EV  Y€?pov  (bpovcov. 
firiridrjrai  rrj  iroirifffi,  irdvv  8oK(ai/  /caA'  fl(T<popf'iy, 
fiaivfrai  re  Kal  iropoppe?  riav  typeviav  r$  ffy  K&yif. 
'AAA'  f^ol  irfiOeo-de  irdvr<as-  fj.era0a\6vres  rovs  rpoirovy 
fify  (pOoveW,  orav  ris  rif^uv  /j.ovo'iK'fj  xa'LPP  vfoiv. 


432  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.XX. 

§  257.  A  few  words  of  summary  may  here  be  useful  on  the 
general  condition  to  which  comedy  had  attained  when  Aristo- 
phanes arose.  The  long,  or  rather  crowded,  series  of  poets  up 
to  Eupolis  had  brought  it  out  of  the  rude  and  extemporaneous 
amusement  of  amateurs  on  a  holiday  into  the  stricter  form  of  a 
drama  imitated  in  its  general  outline  from  the  externals  of  tra- 
gedy. There  was  the  same  sort  of  application  to  the  archon 
for  a  chorus,  which  was  carefully  trained,  and  had  indeed  a 
more  arduous  task  than  the  tragic  chorus.  For  its  larger 
number  (twenty-four)  enabled  the  poet  to  use  sections  of  it  for 
different  purposes,  so  that  some  of  them  took  part  in  the  play 
itself,  while  the  rest  remained  more  or  less  interested  spec- 
tators, as  in  tragedy.  The  plots,  if  such  they  can  be  called, 
were  also  far  looser  and  admitted  of  all  manner  of  changes, 
according  to  the  exuberance  of  the  poet's  fancy.  '  Nevertheless 
the  actors  seem  to  have  been  limited  to  three  (as  in  tragedy), 
and  the  licenses,  as  in  all  true  art,  were  controlled  by  imper- 
ceptible yet  strict  laws.  The  dialect  was  gradually  determined 
between  the  stilted  grandeur  of  the  tragic  stage  and  the  com- 
mon language  of  Attic  society,  so  as  to  become,  in  the  hands 
of  Aristophanes  and  his  contemporaries,  the  most  perfect 
diction  in  all  Greek  literature.  For  there  is  no  Greek  which 
can  compare  for  vigour,  for  grace,  and  for  fullness  with  the 
language  of  the  old  Attic  comedy. 

It  will  be  seen  in  the  foregoing  list  that  the  comic  writers 
were  not  at  all  so  prolific  as  their  tragic  brethren,  and  Anti- 
phanes,  in  an  extant  fragment,  shows  us  ample  reasons  for  it. 
In  tragedy  the  plots  were  given  beforehand  by  the  myths,  and 
allowed  a  very  moderate  amount  of  originality  in  the  poet, 
whose  whole  attention  was  directed  to  the  sentiments  and  dic- 
tion of  given  characters.  The  title  and  the  prologue  told  the 
whole  plot. 

But  in  comedy — that  is  to  say,  in  the  purely  old  Attic 
comedy — everything  was  due  to  the  invention  of  the  poet. 

Indeed,  as  we  have  already  seen,  even  in  the  Sicilian  plays 
of  Epicharmus,  mythological  travesty  and  parody  were  jocular 
variations  upon  a  given  theme. 

It  is,  however,  a  great  mistake  to  think  that  tiie  non-poli- 


CH.  XX.       PERMANENT  TYPE  OF  COMEDY.  433 

tical  forms  did  not  exist  in  the  fourth  century  at  Athens.  All  the 
notable  comic  playwrights  composed  plays  in  this  style,  so  much 
so  that  I  believe  the  origin  of  the  Epicharmian  and  the  Attic 
comedy  not  to  have  been  very  different,  and  that  what  is  called 
the  Old  Comedy  was  really  an  accidental  and  temporary  outburst 
of  political  writing  in  the  feverish  climax  of  the  Athenian  de- 
mocracy. As  soon  as  these  special  conditions  passed  away  or 
even  halted  for  a  moment,  comedy  returned  to  its  older  anrt 
tamer  function  of  criticising  general  types  in  society,  literary 
work,  and  cruda  superstitions.  Thus  the  Middle  Comedy  was 
no  new  development,  but  a  survival  of  the  older  and  more 
general  type,  which  came  again  into  the  foreground  when  no 
longer  obscured  by  a  brilliant  innovation.  The  so-called  Old 
Comedy  was  then  really  nothing  but  the  political  period  of 
Attic  comedy,  which  was  indicated  not  only  in  the  plots,  which 
were  political  burlesques,  but  in  the  famous  interludes  (para- 
bases),  in  which  the  chorus  turned  and  came  forward  to  address 
the  house  in  the  person  of  the  poet  with  personal  advice,  com- 
plaint, sarcasm,  or  solemn  warning  It  is  not  unusual  for  one 
of  the  characters  to  lay  aside  his  part,  and  assume  the  poet's 
voice,  thus  occupying  the  place  of  the  parabasis.  This  was 
said  to  have  been  a  fashion  in  Euripides'  plays  also,  in  which, 
for  example,  Melanippe  was  supposed  to  be  a  mouthpiece  of  his 
views.  The  nearest  approach  we  have  to  a  parabasis  nowadays 
is  the  topical  song  in  our  pantomimes,  which  is  always  com- 
posed on  current  events,  and  has  verses  added  from  week  to 
week,  according  as  new  points  of  public  interest  crop  up.  The 
analogy  between  this  digression  and  the  Aristophanic  parabasis 
is  striking  enough. 

This  so-called  parabasis,  and  the  choral  songs,  are  the  really 
distinctive  feature  of  the  earlier  Attic  plays,  and  whenever  one 
was  composed  without  it,  or  on  a  mythological  instead  of  a  po- 
litical subject,  we  are  told  by  the  critics  that  it  approaches  the 
character  of  the  Middle  Comedy — in  reality  it  merely  conforms 
to  the  general  type.  By  most  modern  authorities  the  parabasis 
is  held  to  be  the  original  nucleus  from  which  the  Attic  comedy 
developed.  If  the  above  remarks  be  well  grounded,  this  view 
is  incorrect,  and  the  older,  now  abandoned,  theory  is  true,  that 

VOL.  i. — 19 


434  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.     CH.  XX. 

originally  the  volunteer  actors  assembled  for  the  perform- 
ance of  some  rude  masque  or  farce,  and  that  they  gradually 
came  to  abuse  this  disguise  for  the  purpose  of  making  personal 
attacks  with  impunity.  The  very  title  parabasis  seems  to  me  a 
strong  argument  for  this  account  of  the  matter.  The  analogy 
of  tragedy  has  been  pushed  too  far  by  modern  critics.  There 
the  chorus  was  indeed  the  nucleus,  and  the  actors,  at  first  one, 
then  two,  then  three,  were  added  slowly  and  sparingly.  The 
origin  of  comedy  was  different.  Apparently  any  member  of  the 
twenty-four  persons  performing  might  come  forward  as  an  actor; 
they  did  so  irregularly,  and  what  Cratinus  did  was  not  to  in- 
crease, but  to  limit  the  number  to  three,  and  give  them  the 
acting  parts  all  through,  reserving  his  chorus  for  the  parabasis 
and  choral  odes.  The  separate  odes  require  little  notice  here, 
as  they  were  not  frequent ;  they  generally  consist  of  hymns  to 
the  gods  or  hymenaeal  songs  based  upon  the  tragic  models  as 
to  metre  and  diction.  But  the  parabasis,  which  interrupted 
the  course  of  the  play  with  a  most  interesting  intermezzo,  was 
far  more  characteristic.  In  its  complete  form,  as  we  find  it  in 
Aristophanes'  JBirds,  it  opens  with  an  introductory  co/z/ia'rtoi', 
then  the  proper  parabasis  or  address  to  the  audience  by  the 
coryphaeus,  generally  in  anapaestic  tetrameters,  and  called  ava- 
TTuiffroi,  also  Trrlyoc,  or  paKpov,  from  its  demands  upon  the 
voice.  Then  comes  a  short  lyrical  hymn  (in  the  Birds,  sixteen 
lines),  followed  by  an  appendix  to  the  parabasis  called  epirrhema, 
with  an  antistrophe  and  an  antepirrhema.  But  in  most  plays 
this  elaborate  form  is  not  observed,  and  there  are  addresses 
from  the  actors,  and  scattered  odes  which  supply  its  place. l 

§  258.  There  are  some  other  facts  disclosed  by  the  notices 
on  earlier  playwrights,  as  well  as  on  Aristophanes,  which  are  of 
the  highest  interest,  as  showing  the  natural  analogies  between 
the  growth  of  the  drama  in  this  and  in  other  ages  and  nations. 
We  hear  in  numerous  cases  that  the  authors  began  as  players 

1  I  note  here  the  divisions  in  the  parabasis  of  the  Birds  :  K0fj.fj.drio>>,  vv. 
677-84  ;  parabasis,  685-736  ;  melic  ode,  737-52  ;  epirrhema,  753-68  ; 
antistrophe  of  ode,  769-84  ;  antepirrhema,  785-800.  There  are  besides 
three  short  personal  songs  of  satirical  character  for  the  chorus — viz.  1 101, 
sq.,  1470,  sq.,  and  1553,  sq. 


CH.  xx.      CASES  OF  DIVIDED  AUTHORSHIP.  433 

for  older  poets,  and  gradually  advanced  to  independent  efforts. 
There  is  a  passage  in  Aristophanes  (Knights,  541,  sq.)  which 
possibly  points  to  a  similar  progress  in  his  case.  The  parallels 
of  Moliere  and  of  Shakspeare  will  at  once  occur  to  the  reader. 
It  was  on  the  stage  itself  that  these  writers  learned  what  suited 
their  public,  and  what  effects  were  practically  attainable.  So 
also  the  early  Attic  acting-authors,  whose  great  object  was  to 
provide  the  public  every  year  with  an  entertainment  bearing  on 
the  events  of  the  day,  must  have  worked  very  fast,  and  one 
of  them  speaks  of  it  as  something  extraordinary,  that  he  had 
spent  two  years  at  one  of  his  plays.  We  find  that  Aristophanes, 
when  he  started  in  his  career,  produced  a  play  every  year,  and 
we  know  from  the  number  assigned  to  him,  and  from  the  didas- 
calise,  that  he  must  sometimes  have  composed  even  faster.  It 
was  probably  owing  to  this  pressure  that  we  hear  so  often  of 
comic  poets  bringing  out  altered  editions  not  only  of  their 
own,  but  of  other  poets'  plays — a  practice  common  in  Shak- 
speare's  day.1  We  also  hear  constantly  of  two  poets  pro- 
ducing a  play  together,  and  this  is  especially  attested  in  the 
case  of  Aristophanes'  Knights,  of  which  Eupolis  wrote  a  part. 
This  joint  authorship  often  led  to  mutual  recriminations,  and 
after-charges  of  plagiarism,  and  doubtless  often  to  disputed 
authorship.  The  latter  difficulty  was  increased  by  another 
Elizabethan  habit — that  of  consigning  a  play  (doubtless  for 
some  pecuniary  consideration)  to  another  person,  who  applied 
in  his  own  name  for  the  chorus,  discharged  the  duties  of  the 
performance,  and  was  proclaimed  the  victor,  if  the  play  was 
successful.  There  must  necessarily  have  been  some  money 
value  for  this  substitution,  as  it  was  adopted  not  only  by  young 
ind  timid,  but  by  experienced  authors,  who  nevertheless,  in 
the  very  play  thus  disowned,  referred  to  their  own  acknow- 
ledged works  in  such  a  way  as  to  disclose  their  present 
secret.  Accordingly  the  nominal  author  must  merely  (I  fancy) 
have  been  paid,  in  such  cases,  for  ths  labour  of  training  the 
chorus  and  actors.  Of  course  in  many  other  cases  real  help 

1  Cf.  Prof.  Dowclen's  excellent  Primer  on  Sha^spere,  pp.    10-13,  f01  a 
summary  of  points  to  which  I  ana  here  giving  the  old  Greek  parallels. 


436  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xx. 

was  given  privately  by  one  poet  to  another,  and  to  this  we  also 
have  allusions.1 

§  259.  It  remains  for  us  to  say  a  word  on  the  political  and 
moral  aspects  of  comedy  at  this  epoch.  The  Alexandrian  mon- 
archists, followed  by  the  mediaeval  and  modern  antidemocrats, 
have  been  loud  in  the  praises  of  the  Attic  comedy  as  a  censor  oi 
morals,  as  a  scourge  of  political  dishonesty,  as  in  fact  fulfilling 
an  office  similar  to  that  of  the  public  press  of  our  day  in  pam- 
phlets and  leading  articles.  The  comic  poets  themselves  boast 
their  serious  intention  amid  laughter  and  buffoonery;  they  claim 
to  be  public  advisers  and  benefactors.  But  their  evidence  is 
surely  no  better  than  that  of  a  daily  journal  which  professes  to 
attack  on  purely  moral  grounds,  and  for  the  public  good,  whereas 
all  its  complaints  are  strictly  limited  to  the  opposite  party  in 
politics.  It  is  very  remarkable,  and  shows  some  closer  bond 
among  the  comic  poets  than  has  been  suspected  by  the  moderns 
(in  spite  of  its  frequent  assertion  in  the  Greek  tracts  on  these 
writers),  that  not  a  single  comedy,  so  far  as  we  know,  took  the 
radical  side,  and  ridiculed  old-fashioned  ignorance,  or  stupid 
toryism.  On  the  contrary,  the  whole  body  of  the  comic  writers 
knew  no  higher  ideal  than  to  return  to  the  golden  age  of  Milti- 
ades,  if  not  of  Saturn.  They  knew  no  higher  happiness  in  this 
age  than  the  absence  of  new  ideas  and  the  presence  of  material 
comforts.  They  revile  every  radical  leader,  especially  if  of  low 
birth,  and  do  not  spare  the  aristocrats,  like  Alcibiades  and 
Callias,  who  adopted  either  radical  opinions  or  courted  novelties 
in  education  and  in  philosophy.  I  will  not  say  that  there  were 
not  ribald  jokes  about  Kimon,  when  he  was  long  dead,  or  occa- 
sional praise  of  Pericles,  in  comparison  with  low  orators  of  his 
party.  But  the  main  fact  is  certain  ;  the  whole  political  aim  of 
the  old  Attic  comedy  was  to  support  conservatism  against 
radicalism,  and  not  even  the  transcendent  genius  and  noble 
personality  of  Pericles  could  save  him  from  the  most  ribald 

1  e.g.  the  parabasisofthe  Knights,  where  Aristophanes  speaks  of  himself 
as  firtKOvpwv  Kpu/35V  e-rtpots  TTOITJTCUJ,  cannot  refer  to  Philonides  and  Callis- 
tratus,  but  to  this  sort  of  partial  and  really  secret  assistance  given  to 
well-known  dramatists,  perhaps  on  account  of  the  sudden  and  hurried  re- 
quirements of  political  comedy. 


CH.  xx.  REAL   OBJECTS  OF  COMEDY.  437 

attacks,  and  the  grossest  libels,  at  the  hands  of  these  so-called 
guardians  of  morals  and  censors  of  vice.  It  was  so  with  all 
the  noblest  advocates  of  reform  in  all  directions — with  Prota- 
goras, with  Socrates,  with  Euripides.  They  were  all  equally 
the  butt  of  comic  scorn  and  the  victims  of  comic  falsehoods. 
Probably  the  comic  poets  were  persuaded  of  the  mischievous- 
ness  of  these  men  and  their  ideas  ;  but  they  were  persuaded 
as  party  men,  not  as  calm  judges  of  right  and  wrong  ;  and  I 
have  no  doubt  they  were  as  easily  persuaded  of  the  innocence 
of  the  greatest  miscreants  in  their  own  party.  If  these  things 
be  so,  there  will  obviously  be  great  caution  required  in  using 
them  as  historical  evidence.  They  are,  in  fact,  never  to  be 
believed  without  independent  corroboration. 

But  though  their  political  merits  have  been  greatly  over- 
rated, they  stand  pre-eminent  in  another,  and  that  the  original 
object  of  comedy.  The  volunteer  chorus  had  originally  met  for 
the  purpose  of  amusement,  for  the  interchange  of  wit  and  the 
promotion  of  laughter,  and  in  this  the  perfected  Attic  comedy 
seems  still  unapproachable.  We  have  indeed  only  stray  flashes 
from  the  lost  poets,  but  it  is  evident  from  the  attribution  of 
Aristophanes'  plays  to  Archippus,  from  the  frequent  success  of 
other  poets  over  him,  from  his  anxious  and  jealous  rivalry,  that 
we  have  in  him  a  playwright  not  '  primus  longo  intervallo,'  but 
*  primus  inter  pares,'  and  that  the  lost  comedies  sparkled  all  over 
with  gems  of  wit  like  his  inimitable  farces.  So  necessary  an 
element  was  this  moving  of  laughter,  that  none  of  them  were 
ashamed  to  make  use  of  obscenity,  provided  it  was  ridiculous, 
and  we  must  suppose  that  this  element  was  as  much  looked 
forward  to  and  relished  by  the  audience  as  the  inuendos  of  the 
modern  French  drama.  Literary  satire  and  parody  were  only 
beginning  to  be  popular,  because  the  busy  Athenian  public 
were  only  now  beginning  to  be  a  reading  public— all  their  time 
having  been  hitherto  spent  in  active  politics  or  commerce. 
But  the  spread  of  books  was  beginning  ;  literary  discussion 
was  made  popular  by  the  sophists,  and  the  field  of  literary  tra- 
vesty lay  open  whenever  politics  became  too  serious  to  tolerate 
the  satire  of  public  men,  or  became  too  trivial  to  keep  up  the 
interest  in  such  censure. 


438  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XX, 

Such  seems  to  have  been  the  general  condition  of  Attic 
comedy  when  Aristophanes  arose. l 

•  The  reader  will  find  the  various  documents  on  which  our  knowledge 
of  the  history  depends — extracts  from  Platonius,  from  various  anonymous 
scholiasts  from  Tzetzes — in  the  appendices  to  vols.  i.  and  ii.  of  Meineke's 
Fragmenta  Comicortim,  and  summaries  of  the  modern  tracts  on  the  subject 
in  Bernhardy's  and  Nicolai's  histories. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

ARISTOPHANES. 

§  260.  THE  dates  neither  of  the  birth  nor  the  death  of  Aristo- 
phanes are  accurately  known,  but  as  he  was  a  young  man  when 
his  first  play  came  out,  we  may  conjecture  him  to  have  been 
born  450-46  B.C.  He  is  explicitly  called  TUV  ^ijpov  KvtiadriraievG 
g  (f>v\iic,  but  his  father,  Philippus,  had  property  in 
,  to  which  the  poet  alludes  when  he  speaks  (in  the  Achar- 
nians)  of  this  island  being  claimed  in  order  to  secure  him  ; 
and  the  fact  that  he  was  persecuted  by  Cleon  on  a  ypa<]»)  fcvmc, 
for  being  a  foreigner  assuming  civic  rights,  has  thrown  some 
doubt  even  on  the  origin  of  his  father,  who  is  said  by  some  to 
have  been  a  Rhodian  or  a  Greek  of  Naucratis  in  Egypt.  We 
know  nothing  of  the  poet's  private  life  or  education.  If  Plato's 
fancy  picture  in  the  Symposium  could  be  trusted,  he  was  a  man 
of  aristocratic  breeding  and  culture,  living  in  the  best  society 
at  Athens.  But  the  fact  that  Agathon  his  host,  and  Socrates 
the  chief  speaker  on  the  occasion,  were  the  constant  butt  of 
the  poet's  severest  satire  makes  one  doubt  that  this  wonderful 
Symposium  has  even  historical  verisimilitude.  We  know 
from  an  allusion  of  Eupolis  that  he  was  bald  before  his  time, 
and  that  he  had  once  been  a  joint  worker  with  that  poet 
He  also  speaks  himself  of  secretly  helping  other  poets,  and 
of  his  reluctance  to  demand  a  chorus  in  his  own  name.  We 
know  that  the  last  play  he  composed  was  the  P/utus,  in  388 
B.C.,  and  the  biographers  tell  us  he  died  soon  after,  leaving 
three  sons,  Philip,  Nicostratus,  and  Araros,  the  last  of  whom 
he  commended  to  the  public  by  letting  him  bring  out  this 
play.  Araros  came  out  as  an  original  poet  about  375  B.C.,  but 
this  affords  no  certain  evidence  that  his  father  was  then  dead. 


440  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XXI. 

Our  authorities  on  the  life  of  Aristophanes  are  two  Greek  Lives 
— one  by  Thomas  Magister,  the  other  fuller  one  anonymous, 
and  besides  the  notice  by  Suidas.  These  are  supplemented  by 
the  poet's  own  confessions  in  the  parabases  of  the  Acharnians, 
Knights,  and  Wasps.  We  have  the  titles  of  forty- three  plays, 
and  thirty  are  said  to  have  been  read  by  John  Chrysostom,  but 
Suidas  only  knows  the  eleven  we  have  now  remaining.  Aristo- 
phanes' life  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  his  works,  that  it  will 
be  necessary  to  enter  at  once  upon  his  remains,  and  treat  them 
as  far  as  possible  chronologically. 

§  261.  His  first  play,  the  Revellers  (AatraX^c),  came  out  in 
Ol.  88,  i  (427  B.C.),  and  was  not  only  well  received,  but  obtained 
lasting  reputation.  He  seems  in  this  play  to  have  opened  his 
career  by  a  politico-social  criticism,  the  contrast  of  the  old 
simple  conservative  education  with  that  of  the  sophist  teachers, 
which  was  then  becoming  fashionable.  In  the  following  year 
appeared  his  Babylonians,  iu  which  he  turned  his  satire  against 
the  magistracies,  both  those  elected  by  ballot  and  by  vote,  as 
well  as  also  against  Cleon — and  this  at  the  great  Dionysia, 
when  crowds  of  embassies  which  had  come  with  tribute  from 
the  subject  cities  were  in  the  theatre.  For  this  he  was  accused 
and  prosecuted  by  Cleon,  and  he  alludes  to  it  in  his  next 
year's  play,  the  Acharnians,1  the  first  of  those  now  extant,  which 
was  produced  (Ol.  88,  3)  at  the  Len&a,  or  country  Dionysia, 
where  no  strangers  were  present. 

§  262.  The  play  attained  the  first  prize,  but  was  brought 
out  under  the  name  of  Callistratus,  who  had  been  the  producer 
of  both  the  earlier  plays.  In  the  Acharnians  the  poet  already 
stands  before  us  in  his  full  strength,  his  graceful  and  refined 
diction,  his  coarse  and  pungent  wit,  his  contempt  of  plots,  his 
mastery  of  character  and  of  dialogue.  It  is  a  bold  attempt 
to  support  the  aristocratical  peace  party  against  the  intrigues 
and  intimidations  of  the  democratic  war  party,  who  according 
to  the  poet  concealed  selfish  ends  and  personal  aggrandise- 
ment/under  the  cloak  of  patrictism.  The  leading  character, 
Dicasopolis,  around  whom  all  the  scenes  are  grouped,  is  the 
honest  country  farmer,  who  is  weary  of  serving  in  discomfort  on 

1  vv.  377,  502,  630,  sq. 


CH.  xxi.  THE  ACHARNIANS.  441 

garrison  duty,  and  paying  high  for  the  fare  afforded  him  with- 
out stint  by  his  farm.  He  comes  to  the  agora  determined  to 
howl  down  anyone  who  proposes  any  subject  for  debate  save 
that  of  peace.  The  idleness  and  delays  of  the  assembly,  the 
humbug  of  embassies  to  the  great  king,  and  of  strange  ambas- 
sadors, are  paraded  on  the  stage,  and  at  last  Dicseopolis  in  disgust 
determines  to  make  a  private  peace  with  the  Lacedaemonians. 
The  solemn  and  yet  licentious  celebration  of  peace  with  his 
family  is  then  performed.  But  the  chorus  of  Acharnians,  the 
violent  war  party,  whose  lands  have  been  laid  waste,  and  who 
will  not  hear  of  peace,  attacks  him,  and  it  is  only  by  securing 
one  of  their  coal-baskets  as  hostage  that  he  escapes  their  rage. 
He  then  proposes  to  defend  his  cause,  and  the  cause  of  his 
peace,  with  his  head  upon  the  block,  and  for  this  purpose  goes 
to  beseech  Euripides  to  lend  him  a  miserable  and  suppliant 
garb  from  some  of  his  tragedies,  wherewith  to  move  the  pity  of 
his  audience.  The  scene  in  which  he  appeals  to  the  student 
poet,  and  gradually  reviews  all  the  heroes  of  misery  in  his 
tragedies,  is  one  of  great  power,  full  of  wit  and  parody,  and  in- 
tended as  a  vigorous  satire  of  the  new  school  rhetoric,  with 
which  the  plays  abound.  When  he  has  succeeded  in  partly 
persuading  his  judges,  the  malcontent  section  go  off  for  La- 
machus,  the  swashbuckler-general,  who  lives  by  wars  and  ex- 
peditions, and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  hard  hitting  in  exposing 
the  intrigues  of  place-hunters  and  the  neglect  of  honest  citi- 
zens. Then  follow  the  proceedings  at  Dicaeopolis'  free  market, 
in  his  country-seat,  whither  a  starving  Megarian  brings  his 
daughters  for  sale — a  scene  of  no  little  pathos,  mingled  with 
some  obscenity.  There  comes  a  Boeotian  with  various  luxuries, 
which  Dicaeopolis  receives  in  exchange  for  a  troublesome  syco- 
phant, who  turns  up  to  protest  against  any  market  with  enemies. 
The  play  concludes  with  a  humorous  responsive  dialogue 
between  Lamachus,  who  laments  the  hardships  of  campaigning, 
and  is  presently  led  in  wounded,  and  Dicaeopolis,  who  cele- 
brates the  pleasures  and  plenty  of  peace,  and  is  led  in  rflpllow 
with  wine,  and  exuberant  with  license. 

This  famous  piece,  which  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  the 
poet's  work,  and  even  touches  on  the  principal  subjects  which 
19* 


442  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE.    CH.  XXI. 

occupy  all  his  life,  is  in  no  sense  a.  comedy  with  a  plot,  or 
an  attempt  to  portray  nature  or  society.  It  is  rather  an  ex- 
travagant political  farce,  in  which  the  poet  gives  rein  to  his 
imagination,  strings  together  loosely  connected  scenes,  and 
introduces  the  impossible  and  the  imaginary  wherever  it  suits 
his  purpose.  Nevertheless,  there  is  always  a  political  or  social 
object  kept  in  view,  nor  are  the  faults  and  failings  of  any 
class  spared.  We  are  not  surprised  that  it  was  placed  first 
even  against  the  competition  of  Cratinus  and  Eupolis.  The 
text  is  pure  and  not  difficult,  and  the  Greek  scholia  are  par- 
ticularly good.  It  has  been  specially  edited,  among  others,  by 
Elmsley,  Mitchell,  Blaydes,  W.  C.  Green,  and  W.  Ribbeck 
(Leipzig,  1 864).  I  will  speak  of  translations  separately. 

§  263.  The  Knights  (iTnrijc)  appeared  the  very  next  year 
(424).  We  know  in  fact  seven  plays  produced  by  the  poet  in 
seven  successive  years,  the  last  four  of  which  are  extant,  and 
each  of  them  may  fairly  be  called  a  masterpiece.  But  this 
extraordinary  rate  of  production,  which  in  a  poorer  epoch  would 
have  been  well-nigh  impossible,  was  not  by  any  means  a  very 
rapid  rate  of  composing  for  an  Attic  poet,  who  seems  to  have 
thrown  off  piece  after  piece  with  the  same  rapidity  that  Moliere 
produced  his  immortal  plays.  Nor  were  the  comic  poets  at 
all  so  prolific  as  their  tragic  brethren,  who  could  produce  four 
plays  every  year.  Possibly  the  assistance  of  Callistratus  in 
working  up  the  stage  representation  aided  the  poet  materially, 
by  leaving  him  free  for  composition.  The  Knights  were  pro- 
duced in  the  poet's  own  name,  but  he  was  assisted  by  Eupolis, 
to  whom  the  scholiasts  attribute  part  of  the  second  parabasis.1 
The  play  is  more  serious  and  bitter  than  the  Acharnians,  and 
critical  scholars  think  they  perceive  in  it  greater  finish  of  style 
and  richness  of  diction.  Nevertheless,  even  the  greater  strict- 
ness of  plot,  which  must  be  admitted,  does  not  atone  for  the 
monotony  of  the  dialogue  in  which  Cleon  is  out-Cleoned  by 
his  rival  the  sausage-seller.  The  play  personifies  the  Athenian 
demos  as  an  easy-going,  dull-witted  old  man,  with  Nikias, 
Demosthenes,  and  Cleon  among  his  slaves,  among  whom  the 
latter  has  attained  a  tyrannical  ascendancy  by  alternate  bullying 

1  w.  1290,  sq.  ;  cf.  above,  p.  430. 


CH.  XXL  THE  KNIGHTS.  443 

his  fellows  and  flattering  his  master.  By  the  advice  of  oracles, 
which  play  a  great  part  all  through  the  play,  and  which  imply 
an  earnest  faith  in  religion  among  the  Athenian  people  of  that 
day,  the  former  two  persuade  a  low  sausage-seller  (Agoracritus) 
to  undertake  the  task  of  supplanting  Cleon.  He  is  assisted  by 
the  chorus  of  Knights,  who  are  determined  enemies  of  Cleon, 
and  who  come  in  to  defend  their  friends,  and  attack  the  dema- 
gogue, in  their  famous  parabasis.  The  greater  part  of  the 
remainder  is  occupied  with  the  brazen  attempts  of  both  dema- 
gogues to  out-bully  one  another,  and  to  devise  bribes  and 
promises  to  gain  Demos'  favour.  At  last  Agoracritus  prevails 
and  retires  with  Demos,  whom  he  presently  reproduces,  appa- 
rently by  eccyclema,  sitting  crowned,  and  in  his  right  mind, 
heartily  ashamed  of  his  former  follies.  Agoracritus,  who  in 
this  scene  appears  as  changed  in  character  as  his  master,  advises 
him  most  sincerely  concerning  his  politics  and  his  duties  to 
the  subjects.  The  ideal  of  Aristophanes  is  the  usual  one  of 
bigoted  conservatives — a  return  to  the  good  old  days  at  Athens, 
to  those  of  Marathon,  and  to  the  policy  of  Aristeides.  Such 
dreams  are  hardly  less  foolish  than  those  of  socialists  and  com- 
munists as  to  the  future  of  human  society.  The  parabasis  of 
the  Knights  is  the  most  precious  document  we  have  on  the 
history  of  the  comic  drama,  and  I  therefore  quote  it  without 
apology.1 

1  w.  5°7-55° '• 

et  fj.fv  TIS  a>>$]p  -riav  apxaiuv  Ka>/XGi>8o8(5c{<ncaAos  ^/uas 
TjvdyKa^fv  \f£ovTas  firrj  irpbs  rb  Oearpov  irapa/3/jyai, 
OUK  ai>  <pav\cas  fTvx*v  TOVTOV  •     vvv  8'  &|t<Js  laff  6  •TTOITJT^S 
OTI  revs  avTovs  T)f*ii>  /j.ifft't,  ToA/uoE  re  \eyfiv  TO.  St/cata, 
Kal  yewatas  irpbs  "rbv  Tv<pu  XwPf'  Ka^  T^lv  ^P^K'nv. 
&  5e  Qau/J-a^fiv  vfiiov  (p^ffiv  iro\\ovs  avrcji  irpofft6t'Tas, 
Kal  /3affavi£fiv,  us  O'JX^  ?raA.ai  x.°P^v  tilrolti  Kaff  ea.vr6v, 
j](j.us  vfuv  fKe\tvf  tppdffai  TTfpl  TOVTOV.     tprjffl  yap  avfyp 
ovx  "lr'  avoias  TOVTO  ireirovBws  8iaTpi/3ftv,  a\\a  voplfav 
K<ou.(pSo8i5aa'Ka\iav  flvat  xaXtTria-rarov  tpyov  inravTUV ' 
itoXXuiv  yap  5rj  irtipaaa.VT<ev  avTi)v  6\iyots  xaft'ia'aff^a-1 ' 
v/aas  T€  TraAat  StayiyvtiffKcav  ftrfreiovs  r^v  <(>vtnv  &VTO.S, 

Kal  TOVS    TTpOTfpOVS  T&V  TTOiTJTOJV  O,fJ.a  TCJJ  yflpa,  TTpoSltioVTaS' 

TOVTO  /J.fV  eiSdis  aira0€  Mdyvrjs  a/j.a  Tals  iro\iaTs  KaTtovffat?, 


444  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxr. 

The  newest  special  editions  are  by  Velsen  (1869)  ;  Born,  with 
a  German  version  ;  W.  Ribbeck  (1867)  ;  Th.  Kock  (in  Haupt  and 
Sauppe's  series)  ;  and  by  Mr.  Green  in  the  Cambridge  Catena. 

§  264.  In  the  very  next  year  (Ol.  89,  i,  or  423  RG)  Philonides 
brought  out  for  the  now  famous  poet  his  Clouds  —  an  arrange- 
ment, as  I  have  already  suggested,  merely  intended  to  save 
him  the  labour  of  the  stage  practising.  The  play  is  certainly 
lar  superior  to  the  Knights,  yet  nevertheless  was  defeated 
not  only  by  the  brilliant  Wine-tfask  of  old  Cratinus,  but  by  the 
Connus  of  Ameipsias,  a  little  known  poet.  The  extant  play  is 
a  second  edition,  modified,  we  know  not  how  much,  from  the 
unsuccessful  original.  One  of  the  Greek  arguments  (No.  vL) 
mentions  as  altered  the  parabasis,  in  which  the  poet  lectures 


irdaas  8'  vfuv  <p<avas  ifls  Kal  tyd\\uv  Kal 
Kal  AuS/fccy  Kal  tyyvifav  Kal  jSairrd/utj/os 
OUK  f^pKffffv,  aAAa  Tt\tvTvv  fir!  'ffjpus,  ov  yap 

f|6/3A^07J  7rp6(T/3uT1JS  &l>,  OTl  TOU   ffK&TTTtlV  air6Aefy>0TJ. 

elra  KpaTivov  fj.ffj.vi)(Mfi>os,  t>s  vo\\y  f>fv<ras  TTOT'  tvaivcp 

8td  TUV  a.(f>e\uv  irfSicav  fppfi,  Kal  TTJS  ffraffftas  irapaavptav 

£<pApfi  ras  Spvs  Kal  ras  ir\ardvovs  Kal  robs  ^0pous  vpoOf  \vfjLVOVS' 

&ffai  8'  OUK  ?iv  (V  |u/tiro<rf(ji>  ir\i\v,  Aa-'poT  trvKovfSi\f, 

Kal,  reKTOves  fvira\dfj.cav  vfuscov  •    ov-rtas  fivQi}ff(V  tKttvos. 

vvv\  8'  v/j.f'is  avrbv  Aptavres  irapaKiipovvT'  OVK  f\fftre, 

^KVLirrovffwv  rwv  ri\fKTp<av,  Kal  TOV  r6vov  OVK  «T'  eVorroy, 

ruv  ff  apfj.oi>iwv  SiaxaffKOvffui>  •    aAAa  ytpuv  &iv  irepieppfi, 

&a"irep  K.OVVUS,  ffrtcpavov  fifv  (x<av  avov,  Styrj  8'  airo\a>\cb  st 

tv  XPV"  $ia  ras  lrP°i"e'pas  viKas  iriveiv  fv  ry  irpVTaveicp. 

Kal  fi^i  \i]ptiv,  aAAo  OfacrBat  \nrapbv  irapa  rcjJ  Atovvffcp. 

olas  8e  KpaTTjs  opyas  vutav  ijvfffxfro  Kal  ffrv<pe\iyfiovs  ' 

f>s  curb  fffiiKpas  Sairdvris  vfjuis  apurrtfav  oir«rejuirf  v, 

airb  Kpa/j.00Tarov  ffr6fjiaros  fidrruv  affreio-rdras  iirivoias  • 

X.olros  /jLfVTOi  fj.6vos  avT-ripKfi,  Tore  per  iriirrwv,  Tore  8'  oi>xi. 

roDr'  6pp<a5<av  8teVpj)3ej'  ad,  Kal  irpbs  rovroiffiv  e<f>o<r/c6v 

fperyv  XPW13-1  wpaJTa  yevfffOai,  irplv  injSaAiois  eirix*  ip*^, 

K§T'  fvrevGev  Kpcpparfvffai  Kal  rovs  ave/j.ovs  StaOpfjffai, 

Kara  Kufiepvav  ainbv  tavrtp.     rointav  otiv  ouxefta  irdvTasv, 

an  ffwcppoviKus  KOVK  avorircas  fffirriSriffas  £<p\vdpei, 

atpeffff  avTip  iroAw  rb  podiov,  irapairffj^ar'  f<p'  tvotKa  Kairatt 

66pvfiov  xpW'bi'  ATjvatrTjv, 

1v  o  iroiT/rijs  avir)  xa-'lp<al't 

Kara  vow  irpa|os, 

<l>a<Spos  Xdfiirovri  fj.eranr<f. 


CH.  x .  THE  CLOUDS.  445 

the  audience  on  their  want  of  taste  in  refusing  him  the  prize,  the 
dialogue  of  the  two  \6yot,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  piece.  But 
the  work,  as  we  have  it,  seems  imperfectly  recast,  and  was  not 
again  brought  on  the  stage  by  the  poet.  If  so,  it  is  a  curious 
evidence  for  the  existence  of  a  reading  public  apart  from  the 
theatrical  audience  at  Athens. 

The  play  opens  with  a  night-scene,  in  which  the  principal 
actor,  Strepsiades  (Turn-coat),  tells  of  his  miseries,  his  expen- 
sive Alcmseonid  wife,  and  his  spendthrift  son  Pheidippides,  whose 
very  name  is  a  compromise  between  country  saving  and  city 
luxury.  Even  the  slaves  have  become  insolent  in  these  war 
times,  and  the  old  gentleman  cannot  sleep  with  thinking  of  his 
debts  and  his  son's  extravagant  habits.  The  only  safety  he  can 
devise  is  to  send  his  son  to  the  Phrontistery  (Thinking-shop) 
of  Socrates,  who  assumes  the  character  in  this  play  of  the 
vulgar  sophist,  and  will  train  any  young  man  to  win  his  cause, 
however  unjust,  by  subtle  rhetoric.  But  when  the  fashionable 
horsy  young  man  refuses,  the  old  gentleman  presents  himself 
instead  at  the  door  of  the  Phrontistery,  and  finds  the  sage 
swinging  in  a  basket  aloft  observing  the  sun  and  aether.  A 
disciple  further  informs  the  astonished  Strepsiades  of  various 
wonders  in  the  school,  and  groups  of  pale  students  are  seen 
wrapped  in  mysterious  meditations.  Socrates,  who  poses  as  a 
physical  philosopher  and  a  freethinker,  promises  to  transform 
Strepsiades  into  an  accomplished  sophist.  He  calls  down  his 
new  divinities,  the  Clouds,  who  rule  the  world  under  Vortex 
(A7»'or,  Mr.  Browning's  Whirligig),  the  supplanter  of  Zeus. 
The  choral  odes  of  these  Clouds  are  extremely  beautiful,  and 
reveal  a  lyric  power  in  Aristophanes  which  is  not  found  in 
the  earlier  plays.  But  with  the  license  of  comedy  they  not 
only  pass  into  the  poet's  person  in  the  parabasis,  they  even  at 
the  end  assume  the  character  of  the  '  lying  spirits '  in  the  Old 
Testament,  and  declare  that  they  are  meant  to  mislead  into 
condign  punishment  such  as  profanely  disbelieve  in  the  national 
faith. 

Accordingly  on  their  entrance  they  join  Socrates  in  emanci- 
pating Strepsiades  from  the  religion  of  his  fathers.  But  in 
other  respects  he  is  found  an  inept  and  stupid  pupil.  The 


446  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERA  TURE.    CH.  XXI. 

parabasis  is  again  of  the  utmost  independent  value,  owing  to 
its  personal  character,  and  the  sketch  which  Aristophanes  gives 
of  his  aims  in  writing  comedy.1  It  is  delivered  while  Socrates 
and  his  pupil  are  within  at  their  lessons.  When  they  return  to 
the  stage,  Strepsiades  is  put  through  a  long  exercise  in  gramr 
matical  points,  but  breaks  down  through  want  of  memory  and 
quickness,  and  is  advised  by  the  Clouds  to  bring  his  son  to 
the  Phrontistery  instead.  The  son  objects,  but  is  ultimately 
persuaded,  though  reluctantly,  to  enter  the  school.  Here  a 
choral  ode  is  missing,  after  which  follows  the  famous  dialogue 
of  the  Just  and  Unjust  arguments,  in  which  the  poet  paints 
with  enthusiasm  the  old  education,  and  the  splendour  of  old 
Attic  life  in  purity  and  in  beauty.2  But  the  unjust  advocate  of 
the  new,  immoral,  intellectual  education  wins  the  battle,  and 
obtains  the  control  of  the  pupil  in  consequence.  Strepsiades 
at  once  assumes  airs  of  great  impertinence  to  his  creditors, 
trusting  to  his  son's  future  subtleties ;  but  the  first  result  is  a 
quarrel  between  father  and  son  as  to  an  after-dinner  song,  when 
the  son  beats  his  father  and  justifies  the  act  with  his  newly 
acquired  sophistry.  This  suddenly  opens  the  old  Turncoat's 
eyes  ;  he  deplores  his  folly,  and  is  severely  reprimanded  by  the 
now  serious  and  orthodox  Clouds  for  his  blindness  and  immo- 
rality. He  ends  the  play  by  taking  vengeance  on  Socrates,  and 
setting  the  Phrontistery  on  fire.  Such  is  the  general  outline  of 
this  remarkable  piece.  But  it  is  also  full  of  minor  traits  of 
great  interest,  and  these  are  the  special  features  which  make 
both  the  dialogue  and  the  odes  as  interesting  as  anything  now 
extant  of  Greek  comedy. 

§  265.  Some  of  the  questions  raised  about  the  Clouds  are 
not  easily  answered.  But  I  think  the  scholiasts,  as  well  as  their 
modern  followers,  have  expressed  far  too  much  surprise  at  its 
failure.  We  do  not  know  how  far  the  original  piece  was  in- 
ferior to  the  extant  recension,  and  must  merely  note  this  possi- 
bility as  an  element  in  the  problem.  But  if  we  consider  that 
Aristophanes  had  been  declared  victor  for  at  least  two  pre- 
ceding years,  we  can  in  the  first  place  imagine  a  widespread 
jealousy  of  the  new  favourite,  and  an  idea  that  Attic  comedy 
1  Cf.  especially  vv.  518-62.  z  Cf.  vv.  961,  sq.,  1000,  sq.,  &c. 


CH.  xxi.  FAILURE  OF  THE   CLOUDS,  447 

would  suffer  if  all  the  first  prizes  were  adjudged  to  one  poet. 
Added  to  this  feeling,  and  to  the  love  of  variety  common 
to  every  public,  and  very  prominent  in  the  Athenians,  there 
was  this  remarkable  coincidence,  that  old  Cratinus,  the  greatest 
master  of  his  day,  who  had  retired  into  private  life,  suddenly 
flashed  out  in  his  old  vigour  this  year  with  the  famous  Wine- 
flask,  a  play  not  only  of  great  general  excellence,  but  full  ot 
personal  confessions,  and  perhaps  regrets,  which  must  have 
keenly  excited  the  sympathy  of  a  somewhat  capricious,  but 
easily  repentant  public.  It  is  likely  that  the  enthusiasm  ex- 
cited by  the  Ilurtrij  would  have  given  it  the  victory  over  any 
play  opposed  to  it.  It  is  more  difficult  to  say  why  the  Connus 
of  Ameipsias  was  also  preferred,  as  we  know  very  little  of 
either  the  poet  or  the  piece  ;  but  one  fact  is  very  significant. 
Socrates  and  a  chorus  of  Thinkers  (^povrtora/)  appeared  in  it, 
and  there  is  a  fragment  extant  which  describes  the  sage  as 
dressed  in  poor  and  ragged  dress,  but  nevertheless  above  con- 
descending to  meanness  and  flattery.1  If,  then,  Socrates  was 
a  leading  character  in  the  play,  which  was  called  after  a  cele- 
brated flute-player,  who  was  his  master,  Aristophanes  was  de- 
feated on  his  own  subject  by  Ameipsias.  This  makes  it  less 
likely  that  any  injustice  was  done  by  the  judges.  For  while 
granting  all  the  formal  excellence  of  the  play,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  drawing  of  Socrates  in  the  Clouds  is  completely 
unhistorical.  The  caricature  is,  indeed,  so  broad  that  we  must 
acquit  the  poet  of  any  hostile  intention,  and  assume  that  he 
merely  chose  this  well-known  name  to  hang  upon  it  all  the 
eccentricities  and  immoralities  which  he  desired  to  reprehend 
in  the  new  school  of  rhetoric  and  of  education.  Plato's  Sym- 
posium, which  introduces  the  philosopher  and  the  poet  as  boon 
companions,  corroborates  this  view.  The  physical  speculations 
of  Socrates  were  an  early  and  unimportant  part  of  his  thinking; 
he  was  no  mountebank,  no  swindler,  no  rhetorician  in  the  sense 
of  the  other  sophists.  Yet  all  these  qualities  are  ascribed  to 
him  in  the  Cloitds.  It  is,  indeed,  true  that  the  poet  saw  with 
deeper  insight  than  his  public  that  the  Socratic  teaching  was 
in  real  substance  negative  and  sceptical,  and  might  easily  be 

1  Meineke,  ii.  p.  703. 


448  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  XXI. 

distorted  into  vicious  word-splitting  and  idle  chicanery.  But 
the  Athenian  public,  on  the  other  hand,  felt  rightly  that  the 
personality  of  the  man  was  honest  and  noble,  and  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  his  bravery  at  the  battle  of  Delium,  not  a  year 
earlier,  helped  to  disgust  them  with  the  caricature,  and  reject 
the  clever  but  deeply  unjust  caricature  of  Aristophanes.  It  is 
also  likely  that  a  very  large  part  of  the  audience  took  no  interest 
in  the  physical  speculations  of  Anaxagoras  and  Euripides,  and 
were  somewhat  bored  by  the  prominence  given  to  barren 
subtleties.  To  such  people  the  ridicule  of  Cleon  and  his  dis- 
honesty would  come  home  at  once,  for  every  Athenian  was 
more  or  less  a  politician;  accordingly  the  Knights  would  com- 
mand far  more  public  interest  than  the  Clouds  at  Athens,  as  the 
Happy  Land,  which  ridiculed  Mr.  Gladstone's  Cabinet,  would 
command  it  in  England,  far  more  than  any  unjust  caricature 
of  Mr.  Darwin  and  his  philosophy.  There  are  many  special 
editions  and  translations  of  this  play.  I  may  specify  those  of 
F.  A.  Wolf  (1811),  Welcker  (1810),  Teuffel  (ed.  3,  Leipzig, 
1868),  Bothe,  and  Green.  The  last  is  that  of  Th.  Kock  (2nd 
ed.  in  Haupt  and  Sauppe's  series).  It  is  discussed  in  all  the 
histories  of  Greek  Sophistic,  in  connection  with  Socrates. 

§  266.  We  pass  to  the  comedy  of  the  following  year,  the 
Wasps  (Hornets  ?).  There  is  some  confusion  in  the  Greek  argu- 
ment of  the  play,  which  states  that  it  was  brought  out  by 
Philonides,  and  obtained  second  prize,  but  that  the  first  prize 
was  obtained  by  the  Retuarsal  (*fnayitv\  also  brought  out  by 
Philonides,  and  also  written  by  Aristophanes. *  This  producing 

1  Mr.  Rogers,  in  his  careful  and  shrewd  preface  to  his  edition,  proposes 
o  emend  the  corrupt  scholium  differently,  and  reads  it  to  this  effect :  that  the 
play  came  out  in  the  second  year  of  the  8gth  Ol.,  under  A  ristophanes'  own 
name,  and  was  first.  The  irpoaytav  (which  ridiculed  Euripides)  was  brought 
out  by  Philonides,  and  was  second,  Leucon  with  the  Am&assadors  third. 
This  correction  seems  to  me  more  probable  than  the  others  proposed.  Mr. 
Rogers'  refutation  of  the  usual  view  of  the  play,  as  a  satire  upon  the  Athe- 
nian jury  system,  is  also  perfectly  sound.  He  shows  some  inconsistencies 
in  the  plot,  which  point  to  haste  or  change  of  mind  in  the  composition. 
Thus  the  chorus  on  entering  speak  of  their  comrade  as  suddenly  and  un- 
expectedly absent,  whereas  the  opening  scene  represents  him  as  long  con- 
fined and  prohibited  from  attending  the  courts. 


CH.  xxi.  THE   WASPS.  449 

of  two  plays  by  the  same  author  in  the  same  year  seems  very 
strange,  in  the  face  of  the  competition  of  many  poets  to  obtain 
a  chorus,  and  it  is  likely  that  the  passage  has  been  so  corrupted 
that  the  real  sense  is  lost.  The  play  is  not  so  brilliant  as  the 
Clouds,  and  is  intended  to  ridicule  the  simplicity  of  the  body  of 
poorer  Athenian  citizens,  who  spent  their  life  sitting  in  judgment 
upon  all  the  affairs  of  the  empire,  and  receiving  their  three  obols 
daily  by  way  of  support.  They  imagined  themselves  the  rulers 
of  the  empire,  whereas  they  were  really  the  tools  of  dema- 
gogues and  of  rhetoricians  who  pocketed  the  real  profits. 
Though  the  principal  characters  are  called  Philo-cleon  and 
Bdely-cleon,  no  living  personage  is  introduced,  and  the  play  is 
remarkable  as  the  earliest  we  have  which  deals  wholly  in 
imaginary  circumstances.  The  old  dicast,  who  has  gone  mad 
with  love  of  sitting  on  juries,  is  confined  by  his  sensible  son 
with  the  aid  of  slaves  ;  and  here  we  find,  perhaps,  the  only  case 
in  which  Aristophanes  represents  the  younger  generation  as 
having  more  sense  than  the  old.  But  he  probably  merely 
intends  to  intimate  a  very  general  Greek  feeling,  that  old  age, 
instead  of  being  venerable  and  excessively  wise,  is  really  feeble 
and  prejudiced.  The  Homeric  attempt  of  the  old  man  to 
escape,  like  Odysseus  from  the  cave,  is  very  comic.  His 
friends,  the  chorus  of  Wasps,  come  to  his  aid,  but  are  driven  off 
by  Bdelycleon,  and  compelled  to  listen  passively  to  an  argu- 
ment between  father  and  son,  in  which  the  former  boasts  all  the 
nominal  grandeur  of  the  sovereign  Athenian  people  sitting  in 
judgment,  while  the  latter  shows  the  hollovvness  and  vanity  of 
their  pretensions.  Ultimately  the  old  man  is  appeased  by  a 
mock  trial  of  a  dog  for  stealing  cheese,  which  is  got  up  for  him 
at  home.  The  attempt  at  humanising  the  old  dicast,  and  bring- 
ing him  back  into  the  ways  of  society,  is,  however,  too  sudden. 
Though  he  shows  much  quickness  of  political  repartee  in  the 
skolia  which  his  son  proposes,  he  is  rude  and  unmannerly,  and 
his  behaviour  to  his  associates  shows  the  license  of  a  sudden 
emancipation  from  the  trammels  of  self- imposed  political  duties. 
The  latter  part  of  the  play  gives  us  much  insight  into  the 
nature  of  social  intercourse  at  Athens.  The  subject  was  imi- 
tated by  Racine  in  his  solitary  comedy,  Les  Plaidcurs,  which  is 


450          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XXI. 

a  melancholy  contrast  to  its  original  as  to  freshness  and  humour. 
There  are  excellent  editions  by  Mitchell,  Hirschig  (with  special 
collations  by  Bekker  and  Cobet,  Leiden,  1847),  Julius  Richter, 
with  Latin  notes  (Berlin,  1858),  and  by  Mr.  Rogers,  with  a 
metrical  translation.  Many  of  the  political  allusions  have  been 
fully  discussed  by  Miiller-Striibing  in  his  Aristophanes  und  die 
historische  Kritik. 

§  267.  In  the  following  year  (Ol.  89,  3)  Aristophanes 
brought  out  the  first  edition  of  the  Peace,  when  Eupolis  gained 
the  first  prize  with  his  Flatterers,  and  Leucon  the  third  with  his 
Clansmen.  The  Peace  seems  to  have  been  rehandled  by  the 
poet,  but  there  are  not  in  our  text  (though  there  are  in  the 
scholia)  signs  of  a  recension.  The  object  of  the  play  is  to 
recommend  the  then  expected  peace  of  Nikias,  as  both  Brasidas 
and  Cleon  had  lately  been  killed,  and  thus  the  war  party  at 
both  Athens  and  Sparta  was  sensibly  weakened.  It  was  acted  at 
the  great  spring  festival,  -when  the  deputies  of  the  allies  with 
their  tribute  were  present,  as  appears  from  many  allusions. 
The  scene  is  partly  laid  in  heaven,  evidently  on  the  upper  story 
above  the  stage,  whither  Trygseos  (the  Vintager),  an  elderly 
citizen,  flies  up  on  a  dung-beetle  to  bring  down  the  goddess 
Peace,  who  has  been  immured  by  War,  while  the  gods  in 
disgust  have  gone  away,  leaving  War  to  do  as  he  chose. 
Hermes,  an  insolent  but  servile  doorkeeper,  is  the  only  god 
who  appears.  Two  slaves  who  are  fattening  Trygseos'  beetle 
open  the  piece  with  a  dialogue  which  passes  into  the  prologue, 
as  was  often  the  case  in  Aristophanes'  plays.  When  Peace  is 
brought  down  again  to  earth,  and  upon  the  stage,  the  prepara- 
tions for  her  marriage  with  Trygaeos  occupy  the  rest  of  the 
play,  of  which  the  action  halts  after  the  first  800  lines,  but  the 
dialogue  is  all  through  very  witty  and  full  of  clever  parodies. 
On  the  whole  the  play  is  more  brilliant  and  imaginative  than  the 
Wasps,  but  too  much  flavoured  with  that  obscenity,  which, 
however  comical,  disfigures  several  of  the  poet's  later  works, 
and  which  he  himself  deprecates  in  earlier  plays.  Some  pas- 
sages in  the  Parabasis  and  elsewhere  are  copied  from  older 
productions,  and  yet  we  cannot  but  wonder  at  the  fertility  of 
the  poet's  treatment  of  the  same  subject  which  he  had  handled 


CH.  xxi.  THE  BIRDS.  451 

in  the  Acharnians,  with  such  completely  different  scenery  and 
arrangement.  It  seems  as  if  the  phantastic  element  had  become 
much  more  prominent  in  him  about  this  period  of  his  life. 
The  best  special  editions  of  this,  as  of  the  last  play,  are  by 
Julius  Richter  (Berlin,  1860)  and  Mr.  Rogers. 

§  268.  There  is  now,  in  our  extant  remains,  a  gap  of  seven 
years  before  the  date  of  the  next  play,  the  Birds.  This  accident 
suggests  to  critics  a  distinction  between  the  poet's  earlier  and 
later  style,  which  is  hardly  warranted  by  the  plays  themselves. 
The  Peace  seems  to  me  to  possess  all  his  later  characteristics  in 
full  development,  and  is  nevertheless  brought  out  in  close  con- 
nection with  his  older,  more  serious,  and  more  political  plays. 
The  temperate  allusion  to  Cleon  shortly  after  his  death '  is  a 
curious  contrast  to  the  attack  on  Euripides  in  the  Frogs  under 
the  same  circumstances.  Here  there  is  a  sort  of  de-mortuis- 
nil-nisi-bonum  feeling  implied.  The  Birds  came  out  in  the 
spring  of  414  B.C.,  in  the  year  following  the  sending  out  of  the 
Sicilian  expedition,  the  panic  about  the  Hermae,  and  the  recall 
and  banishment  of  Alcibiades.  The  law  of  Syracosius  limiting 
the  freedom  of  lampooning  in  comedy  was  doubtless  connected 
with  the  public  excitement  of  the  time,  when  the  jibe  of  a 
comedian  might  bring  upon  any  man  suspicion,  prosecution, 
and  exile.  It  is  doubtless  to  these  circumstances  that  we  may 
ascribe  the  political  vagueness  of  this  piece,  which  is  a  general 
satire  upon  the  vain  hopes  and  wild  expectations  of  young 
Athens,  and  ridicules  their  ideal  empire  in  the  western  Medi- 
terranean, which  contrasted  so  strongly  with  the  poet's  conser- 
vative notions  about  old  Attic  purity,  dignity,  and  simplicity. 
We  may  now  declare  that  this  retrograde  ideal  of  the  old  party 
was  not  less  impossible  than  the  Cloudcuckootown  of  the  ad- 
vanced thinkers,  and  even  in  the  Middle  Comedy  there  were  not 
wanting  parodies  of  the  ancient  heroic  simplicity  analogous  to 
this  in  the  Birds.  Nevertheless,  to  us  the  comedy  is  profoundly 
interesting  as  a  piece  of  brilliant  imagination,  with  less  political 
rancour,  and  less  obscenity  than  most  of  the  author's  work,  and 
justly  accounted  one  of  the  best,  if  Hot  the  best,  of  his  extant 
plays. 

1  w.  646,  sq. 


452  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  xxi. 

The  play  was  brought  out  by  Callistratus,  and  obtained 
second  prize,  Ameipsias  being  first  with  his  Revellers,  Phryni- 
cush  third  with  his  Monotropos.  It  opens  with  a  dialogue  between 
two  Athenian  typical  characters,  Persuader  (\lei6traipoc)  and 
Hopeful  (EveXTT/^e),  who  are  disgusted  with  litigious  Athens, 
and  are  wandering,  conducted  by  a  crow  and  jackdaw,  and 
attended  by  two  slaves,  in  search  of  the  avtfied  Tereus,  now  a 
hoopoe,  who  will  show  them  a  quiet  city  where  they  may  live 
without  law.  This  is  told  us,  as  usual,  by  one  of  the  characters 
in  the  first  dialogue.  It  is  remarkable  that  these,  like  almost 
all  Aristophanes'  leading  characters,  are  not  young,  but  elderly 
men.  They  find  the  hoopoe,  who  calls  out  his  wife,  the 
nightingale,1  and  these  summon  all  the  birds  to  council.  No 
sooner  has  Persuader  asked  a  few  questions  about  the  life 
of  the  birds,  than  he  conceives  and  propounds  a  scheme  to 
the  hoopoe  of  settling  all  the  birds  into  a  great  polity,  and 
shutting  off  by  means  of  it  the  ways  from  earth  to  heaven,  so 
that  the  gods,  being  starved  out  by  want  of  offerings,  shall 
come  to  terms,  and  resign  the  sovereignty  of  the  world  to  the 
birds.  This  scheme  is  accordingly  carried  out,  the  city  is 
established  and  there  are  very  comic  scenes,  when  all  sorts  of 
worthless  sycophants,  mountebank  priests,  and  windy  poets 

1  The  beautiful  invocation  to  the  nightingale  is  worth  quoting   (vv 

209-24)  : 

&ye  ffvvvo,u.f  fJioi,  iravffcu  fitv  viryov, 
Xvffov  8e  v6/J,ovs  lep<af  vfj-vuv, 
ovs  Sict  6t  lov  ffr6(J.a.ros  Oprjitfis, 
T~bv  ffj,bv  Kal  ffbv  iro\v8aKpvj>  'Irvv 
e\e\t^ofj.fyr)  Stepo'is  /leAeirij' 
ytvvos  ^ovOrjs' 

KaOapa  'X.iapfl  810  et>v\\OK6fJ.ov 
/u'AaKOS  i)x&>  Ttpbs  Albs  fSpas, 
1v  6  •%pvffOK&[j.a.s  <fco?)3os  aKOvcav. 
roils  ffols  f\€~yoi$  apTi^aAAoji' 
Ov  <p6pfj.iyya,  6euv 


Sia.  5'  aBavdrcav  crro/JMTCov 

^vfi.<p(avos  6/j.ov 

Beta  fj.aKa.pwv  o\o\wy4). 

(ouA.6«.) 


CH.  xxi.  THE  LYSISTRATA.  453 

come  to  Persuader  to  get  wings  and  live  among  the  birds. 
Iris  is  caught  flying  through  the  city  on  an  errand  from  Zeus 
to  order  men  to  sacrifice,  as  the  gods  are  starving.  She  is 
sent  back,  and  meanwhile  a  herald  comes  up  from  the  earth  to 
say  that  the  mortals  have  consented  to  submit  to  the  Birds' 
sovereignty.  Presently  Poseidon,  Heracles,  and  Triballus — a 
barbarian  god,  who  does  not  know  how  to  put  on  his  cloak — 
come  as  an  embassy  from  the  gods.  But  Heracles,  who  is  very 
gluttonous,  and  moreover  hungry,  is  ready  to  accept  any  terms, 
when  he  finds  Persuader  cooking  a  rich  meal  to  which  he 
hopes  to  be  invited.  Triballus  is  unintelligible,  but  sides  with 
Heracles,  and  so  Poseidon  is  forced  to  comply  with  the  dis- 
graceful terms  of  submitting  to  the  Birds,  and  allowing  Basileia 
(Sovereignty)  to  be  brought  down  and  married  to  Persuader. 
The  play  ends,  as  the  Peace  does,  with  the  Hymeneal  song. 

It  is  full  of  the  richest  imagination  and  the  brightest  wit,  but 
it  is  idle  to  discuss  the  endeavours  of  modern  critics  to  pierce 
the  disguise  under  which  the  poet  may  have  ridiculed  definite 
persons.  As  a  general  satire  on  young  Athens  it  is  full  of 
point,  and  a  real  work  of  genius.  I  have  already  pointed  out 
(above,  p.  434)  the  careful  and  complete  structure  of  the  para- 
basis.  It  is  surprising  how  few  special  editions  of  this  play  have 
been  published  in  recent  times.  The  earlier  part  has  been  re- 
produced for  the  stage,  with  sundry  modifications,  by  Goethe  in 
1780,  and  the  whole  play  has  been  translated  by  the  poet 
Riickert.  '  There  is  a  handy  school  edition  by  Th.  Kock 
( Haupt  and  Sauppe's  series). 

§  269.  The  Lysistrata  appeared  in  411  B.C.,  after  the  Sici- 
lian disaster,  when  ten  Probouloi  had  been  appointed  to  manage 
the  city,  and  when  its  democracy  was  just  being  overthrown 
by  the  oligarchs  under  Peisander  and  Antiphon.  We  may 
take  for  grqnted  that  comic  license  was  forbidden.  The  Pei- 
sander mentioned  in  the  play  was  probably  therefore  not  the 
politician,  and  there  is  no  allusion  to  Antiphon.  Nevertheless, 
under  the  mask  of  obscene  ribaldry  there  is  no  play  of  Aristo- 
phanes more  seriously  in  earnest  about  the  affairs  of  the  state. 
.His  usual  policy  is  enforced  by  representing  the  women  of 
all  Greece  determined  to  refuse  conjugal  rights  to  their  hus- 


454  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XXI. 

bands  until  peace  is  proclaimed,  and  at  the  same  time  seizing 
the  Acropolis  in  order  to  secure  the  treasure  of  the  Parthenon 
from  being  applied  to  war  purposes.  A  chorus  of  old  men  who 
come  to  attack  the  Propylaea  with  fire,  and  a  chorus  of  the 
elder  women  who  defend  it  with  water,  replace  with  their  re- 
sponsive odes  and  comic  abuse  the  usual  single  chorus.  There 
is  no  parabasis.  The  Spartan  woman,  Lampito,  who  is  remark- 
able not  only  for  her  splendid  physique,  but  for  her  character 
and  self-control,  speaks  throughout  in  her  own  dialect,  as  do 
the  Spartan  ambassadors  at  the  close  of  the  play,  and  they  thus 
afford  us  an  excellent  specimen  of  that  remarkable  Doric  which 
is  hardly  represented  in  any  extant  branch  of  Greek  literature. 
The  political  advice  comes  not  from  the  chorus,  but  from  the 
leading  character,  whose  typical  name,  Lysistrata,  indicates  het 
policy.  She  recommends  forgetfulness  of  past  offences,  in  fact 
amnesty  and  a  coalition  of  interests  with  the  allies,  who  had 
been  hitherto  treated  as  mere  subjects.  There  is  no  vain  pic- 
turing of  past  happiness  or  future  glory,  but  rather  a  homely, 
anxious  review  of  the  situation,  with  a  determination  to  do  the 
best  in  a  frightful  crisis.1  The  spectacle  of  an  Athenian  public 

1  I  call  particular  attention  to  the  following  passage,  as  the  most  dis- 
tinctly pathetic  which  we  have  in  Aristophanes, 
vv.  588,  sq.  : 

IIPO.  OVKOVV  Seivbv  TOUT!  ravras  {>ap5i£fiv  KO!  ro\virfveii>, 

ats  ov5f  /j.frT)v  iravv  TO?  iro\e/j.ov  • 

AT.  nal  HT\V,  S>  ira.yKard.parf, 

TrActy  Tje  Siir\ovv  avrbv  <ptpo(j.fv.      trptariffrov  yueV  ye 

rfKOvffc.t 

KaKTre/j.^affaL  ircuSas  6v\iras. 

IIPO.  ffiya,  /u$)  fivriffiKOKTiGris. 

AT.  tiff  T]v'iK  tXpTlv  (v<ppav87ivai  teal  TTJS  TJ^TJS  dn-oAaucrat, 
povoKoirovfjiev  8ia  ras  ffrpartds.     Kal  Orif^frepov  utv 

tare, 
vepl  rOov   Se  Kopcav  ev  rails   6aAa/iOJ$   fqpaaKovaiav 

lun&ftai. 

IIPO.  otf/couj'  •)(&v§pfs  yi\pa.ffKovffiv  ; 

AT.  M«  •A'N  aAA.'  O;JK  tliras  O/J.QIOI: 

o  [lev  I'iKuiv  yap,  Kav  rj  iro\t6s,  ra^y  irarSa  nopyv 

yeyd/j.r)Kev  • 
rfis    Se   yvvaiicbs  fincpas    6    Kaipds,  Kav  rovrov  /t}j 

'•7riA.a)37jTa£, 
ovStls  edf\ei  yrifiat  ravrrjf,  orrtvofifvi)  8f  Kidijrat. 


JH.  xxi.  THE  THESMOPHORIAZUS&.  455 

coming  together  in  their  direst  misfortune,  to  hear  a  play  of 
which  the  very  argument  could  not  be  explicitly  stated  in 
modern  society,  and  of  which  the  details  fully  develop  the 
main  idea,  shows  us  a  great  gulf  between  Attic  and  modern 
culture.  I  will  only  observe  in  explanation  of  so  painful  a 
phenomenon  that  many  ceremonies  of  the  Greek  religion — 
nay  even  the  spiritual  mysteries  of  Demeter — admitted  obscene 
emblems  and  obscene  jokes  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  festival, 
and  this  element  was  as  prominent  in  the  feasts  of  women  as 
in  those  where  men  only  were  engaged.  Thus  the  naturalism 
of  Greek  polytheism,  as  contrasted  with  the  asceticism  of 
Christianity,  engendered  a  state  of  feeling,  even  in  the  most 
refined,  which  would  be  accounted  among  us  shocking  gross- 
ness.  The  indulgence,  therefore,  of  Athenians  in  such  amuse- 
ments as  the  Lysistrata,  though  under  all  circumstances  ob- 
jectionable, is  not  by  any  means  to  be  regarded  as  parallel 
to  a  similar  performance  in  modern  times. 

The  scene  being  laid  at  the  Propylsea  of  the  Acropolis  is  full 
of  local  allusions  to  the  surrounding  features,  which  have  been 
missed  by  most  commentators  owing  to  their  want  of  familiarity 
with  the  place.  Of  course  the  play  from  its  very  nature  has 
been  little  commented  on  in  special  editions.  There  is  a  text 
with  scholia  by  Enger  (Bonn,  1844)  cited  by  Bernhardy.  Mr. 
Rogers  has  done  all  that  can  be  done  to  bring  it  -within  the 
range  of  modern  readers  in  his  excellent  version,  and  his  com- 
mentary on  selections  from  the  text. 

§  270.  From  the  following  year  (01.  92,  2)  we  have  the 
ThtsmophoriazuscB)  or  celebrators  of  the  Thesmophoria,  in 
which  the  poet  again  makes  the  female  sex  prominent,  but  is 
less  in  earnest  about  politics,  which  had  in  the  meantime 
taken  a  definite  turn,  and  permitted  no  interference.  This  play 
is  perhaps  the  most  comical  which  we  have,  and  might  be 
called  a  '  screaming  farce,'  but  for  the  determined  attack  on  the 
morality  of  the  Athenian  women,  which  is  laid  by  Aristophanes 
wittily,  and  by  the  commentators  stupidly,  on  the  shoulders  of 
Euripides.  This  poet  appears  with  his  father-in-law  Mnesilo- 
chus  in  search  of  Agathon,  whose  effeminate  appearance  and 
style  will  enable  him  to  attend  the  Thesmophoria,  and  defend 


456  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxi. 

Euripides  from  the  conspiracy  made  by  the  women  against 
him,  on  account  of  his  misoguny  and  his  pictures  of  female 
mssior..  Agathon  is  cleverly  parodied,  with  coarse  asides  from 
Mnesilochus,  who  is  the  stock  Athenian  of  the  poet.  But 
Agathon  refuses  the  dangerous  mission  among  the  women,  and 
Euripides  persuades  Mnesilochus,  with  the  aid  of  shaving  and 
of  Agathon's  borrowed  dress,  to  make  the  attempt.  At  a  very 
comic  assembly  speeches  are  made  against  Euripides,  but 
Mnesilochus  ruins  his  case  by  arguing  that  Euripides  had  far 
understated  the  vices  of  women.  This  leads  to  altercation, 
and  then  the  news  brought  by  the  effeminate  Cleisthenes,  that 
a  man  had  entered  the  women's  exclusive  gathering,  leads  to 
the  discovery  and  apprehension  of  Mnesilochus.  By  a  device 
akin  to  that  of  Dicseopolis  in  the  Acharnians,  he  threatens  in 
his  peril  to  slay  a  child,  which  turns  out  to  be  a  wine  skin,  and 
he  is  at  last  put  under  the  charge  of  a  Scythian  policeman. 
The  devices  of  Euripides,  who  approaches  under  the  guise  of 
various  characters  from  his  plays,  especially  from  the  recent 
Helena  and  the  Andromeda,  and  is  answered  by  Mnesilochus, 
afford  scope  for  much  brilliant  parody.  At  length,  under  the 
garb  and  by  the  devices  of  a  procuress,  Euripides  entices  away 
the  Scythian,  and  extricates  his  friend. 

The  chorus,  though  prominent,  sings  no  proper  parabasis, 
nor  is  there  any  serious  address  to  the  audience.  All  the  play 
is  full  of  fun,  and  parody,  and  ribaldry.  The  attack  on  women 
is  a  fiercer  one  than  all  the  plays  of  Euripides  condensed  could 
furnish.  As  to  the  travesties  of  Agathon  and  of  Euripides,  they 
are  all  comic,  and  show,  I  think,  no  personal  hatred,  though 
many  hard  hits  are  dealt.  Plato  makes  Aristophanes  a  personal 
friend  of  Agathon,  and  the  allusion  to  him,  after  his  death, 
in  the  Frogs  corroborates  this.  But  the  Frogs  are  far  more 
severe  on  Euripides  than  this  play,  for  here  his  cleverness  only 
is  ridiculed,  and  his  plays  quoted  as  the  most  popular,  while  his 
attacks  on  the  weaker  sex  are  more  than  justified.  The  in- 
sinuations of  effeminacy  against  Agathon  are  quite  as  foul  as 
those  in  the  end  of  the  play  against  Euripides  for  deal- 
ing in  immorality.  There  are  editions  by  Thiersch,  F.  V. 
Fritzsche.  and  Enger.  Some  fragments  remain  of  a  second 


CH.  xxi.  THE  FROGS.  457 

Thesmophoriazus&i  which  continued  the  plot  of  this  play,  and 
inveighed  chiefly,  according  to  our  fragments,  against  female 
luxury. 

§  271.  Passing  by  the  Pint  us,  as  our  version  of  it  was  pro- 
duced later  (it  was  first  played  in  Ol.  92,  4),  we  come  to  the 
Frogs,  certainly  the  most  interesting,  if  not  the  best  constructed 
of  all  Aristophanes'  extant  plays.  It  came  out  in  405  B.C.,  just 
before  the  battle  of  ^Egospotami,  when  Athens  was  approach- 
ing the  crisis  of  her  history.  Phrynichus  and  Theramenes  are 
still  the  leading  men  of  the  state  ;  people  are  longing  for  Alci- 
biades,  but  afraid  to  recall  him.  It  is  at  such  a  moment  that 
this  wonderful  play  occupied  the  public  with  its  buffoonery,  and 
its  profound  literary  criticism.  It  obtained  first  prize  under 
Philonides'  direction,  and  defeated  (the  comic)  Phrynichus' 
Muses  and  Plato's  Cleophon.  Its  repetition  is  said  to  have  been 
ordered  owing  to  the  prudent  and  moderate  parabasis,  which 
recommends  amnesty  for  past  offences,  especially  in  the  affair  of 
the  Four  Hundred,  and  unity  among  all  the  citizens  to  avert  the 
ruin  of  the  state.1  This  political  advice  is  very  similar  in  tone 
to  that  in  the  Lysistrata.  The  plot  is  separated  into  two  parts  : 
first,  the  adventures  of  Dionysus  on  his  journey  to  Hades  in 
search  of  a  good  poet,  Sophocles  and  Euripides  being  lately  dead ; 
and  secondly,  the  poetical  contest  of  ^Eschylus  and  Euripides, 
and  the  final  victory  of  ^Eschylus.  These  subjects  are  logi- 
cally though  loosely  connected  together,  but  remind  us  strongly 
of  the  dramatic  economy  of  the  very  poet  whom  Aristophanes 
is  here  attacking  so  vehemently.  No  analysis  can  reproduce 
the  real  brilliancy  of  the  piece,  which  consists  in  all  manner  of 
comic  situations,  repartees,  parodies,  and  unexpected  blunders. 

The  attack  on  Euripides,  and  parallel  defence  of  ^Eschylus, 
carried  on  by  the  poets  themselves,  is  of  course  profoundly 
interesting  as  a  piece  of  contemporary  literary  criticism  by  so 
great  a  poet ;  but  great  poets  are  not  always  good  critics. 
Moreover,  whether  from  dramatic  propriety,  or  from  serious 
conviction,  the  points  urged  on  both  sides  are  all  shallow  and 
unimportant,  and  only  of  weight  before  an  idiotic  judge,  such 
as  Dionysus.  How  this  character  can  have  been  intended  to 

1  w.  352,  sq.  . 

VOL.  i. — 20 


458  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XXL 

represent  the  Athenian  public  without  insulting  them  is  hard 
to  understand.  For  if  this  be  the  poet's  meaning,  the  aesthetic 
judgment  of  the  Athenian  public,  and  their  art  criticism,  is 
ridiculed  far  more  bitterly  than  the  fashionable  tragedian. 
The  attacks  of  the  poets  on  one  another  are  partly  gram- 
matical, partly  rythmical,  partly  ethical*  but  hardly  at  all 
aesthetic,  if  we  except  the  objection  to  the  peculiar  stage 
effect  which  ^Eschylus  so  often  used,  of  introducing  his  lead- 
ing character  upon  the  stage  in  silence,  and  keeping  the 
audience  in  long  suspense  before  he  spoke.  The  grammatical 
points  are  minute  and  trifling,  and  as  to  the  rythmical  argu- 
ment against  Euripides'  prologues,1  most  good  iambic  trimeters 
can  be  concluded  withXtjk-vflioi/  airuXtaev,  so  that  there  is  no 
point  in  it  at  all.  The  melic  ramblings  of  Euripides  may  be 
open  to  the  charge  of  disconnection  and  of  effeminate  softness, 
but  assuredly  the  obscurity  of  vEschylus  is  an  equally  important 
defect  in  poetry  addressed  to  a  listening  public. 

By  far  the  most  important  part  of  the  controversy  is  that 
concerning  the  moral  effects  of  tragedy,  for  it  is  assumed  as  an 
axiom  by  all  parties,2  that  the  poets  (whether  dramatic  or  not) 
are  moral  teachers — in  fact,  the  established  clergy  of  the  age — 
and  perform  the  same  office  for  men  which  schoolmasters  do 
for  children.  Assuming  this  standpoint,  Euripides  can  only 
defend  himself  by  urging  that  (he  legends  he  represented  were 
as  he  found  them,  and  that  he  encouraged  practical  good  sense 
and  homely  shrewdness  among  the  citizens — in  fact,  educated 
them  in  good  sense.3 

The  reply  which  we  should  make  to  ^schylus  would 
rather  insist  that  he  himself  was  not  a  great  poet  because  he 
had  a  moral  object,  but  because  in  prosecuting  that  object  he 
stated  great  world  problems,  great  conflicts  of  Destiny  and 
Freedom,  of  Law  and  of  Feeling,  and  set  them  forth  with 
extraordinary  power  and  beauty.  Euripides  may  have  made 
the  mere  changes  of  human  character,  and  the  scourge  of 
passion,  his  conscious  objects,  but  in  portraying  these  things 
well  he  was  no  less  a  great  teacher  of  humanity,  and  a  lofty 
moralist  in  his  own  way.  It  is  as  if  we  should  contrast  Sir 

1  vv.  I2OO,  sq. .  2  vv.  1056,  sq.  s  vv.  948,  sq. 


CH.  xxi.  THE  ECCLEZIAZUS^E.  459 

W.  Scott's  romances,  their  chivalry,  their  ideality,  and  their 
obvious  rewarding  of  vice  and  virtue,  with  the  subtler  and 
deeper  teaching  of  George  Eliot,  who  makes  the  tangled  web 
of  human  life  her  object,  and  does  not  accommodate  her  cata- 
strophes to  traditional  morality.  Sir  W.  Scott  wrote  great  novels, 
not  because  he  wrote  with  an  earnest  moral  purpose,  but 
because  he  drew  periods  of  history,  and  varieties  of  human  cha- 
racter, with  boldness  and  with  poetic  truth.  These  are  the 
eternal  features  of  dramatic  art,  but  they  are  often  most  deeply 
felt  by  great  artists  who  cannot  consciously  express  them. 

As  to  special  editions,  we  have  those  of  Welcker  (1812); 
Pernice,  with  notes  and  version  (1856),  and  Fritzsche  (1863); 
also  Th.  Kock's  (in  Haupt  and  Sauppe's  series),  a  good  school- 
book. 

§  272.  There  is  a  great  descent  in  literary  merit  to  the 
Eccleziazusce,  or  parliament  of  women,  which  came  out  about 
393  B.C.,  when  Athens  was  striving  along  with  Thebes  and 
Argos  to  check  the  pov;er  and  encroachments  of  Sparta.  If 
the  success  at  Knidos  and  the  recovery  of  the  maritime  supre- 
macy had  taken  place,  still  more  if  the  long  walls  were  being 
rebuilt,  it  is  indeed  strange  that  such  a  poet  as  Aristophanes 
should  have  made  no  allusion  to  these  great  successes  and  the 
hopes  they  inspired.  But  the  political  allusions  of  the  play 
contain  no  solemn  warning,  no  hearty  advice  ;  they  are  merely 
a  bitter  satire  on  the  faults  and  weaknesses  of  the  revived 
democracy,  its  unstableness  and  vacillation,  the  selfishness  and 
greed  of  both  poor  and  rich,  the  postponing  of  all  public  interests 
to  private  advantage.  All  the  faults  reproved  by  Demosthenes 
and  Phocion  are  already  prominent;  we  have  before  us  no 
longer  the  Periclean,  but  the  Demosthenic  Athenian.  The 
poet  of  a  greater  and  better  time  has  no  heart  to  advise,  but 
only  to  ridicule  such  people.1  His  main  interest  turns  from 

1  It  is  chiefly  from  this  evidence  that  the  Germans  draw  their  pictures 
of  the  debased  ochlocracy,  and  no  doubt  they  draw  it  according  to  the 
notions  of  Aristophanes  and  his  aristocratic  friends.  But  whether  Athens 
was  really  thus  debased  is  quite  another  question,  and  those  who  have 
studied  Grote's  history,  and  the  affairs  of  the  restored  democracy,  will 
come  to  a  very  different  conclusion.  There  was  no  doubt  a  great 
decadence  in  energy,  but  not  in  social  and  intellectual  qualities. 


460          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xxi. 

political  to  social  questions,  from  practical  to  theoretical  reforms, 
and  he  occupies  himself  with  the  schemes  of  socialism  and  com- 
munism which  were  floating  in  the  air  of  the  schools,  and  which 
may  even  then  have  had  some  countenance  in  Plato's  oral  lec- 
tures. These  theories  he  satirises  by  making  the  women  meet 
in  the  assembly,  dressed  in  their  husbands'  clothes,  and  decide 
that  they  must  in  future  assume  the  management  of  the  state, 
with  full  community  of  goods,  of  husbands — in  fact,  of  every- 
thing. There  is  of  course  a  great  deal  of  humour  in  all  the 
discussions,  especially  in  the  home  conversation  between 
Praxagora,  the  leading  character  (like  the  Lysistrata  of  a 
former  play),  and  her  husband,  in  which  he  is  fully  persuaded 
by  gross  material  prospects  to  acquiesce  in  the  scheme.  The 
dialogue  between  the  honest  citizen,  who  in  obedience  to  the 
decree  brings  out  all  his  goods  into  the  street  for  the  common 
fund,  and  the  dishonest  neighbour,  who  keeps  back  what  he 
has,  and  waits  to  see  how  things  will  turn  out,  is  the  best 
in  the  play,  and  is  an  epitome  of  the  conduct  of  Athens  from 
that  day  onward,  when  patriotism  was  required  of  her.  The 
scenes  which  follow  are  apparently  written  for  obscenity's  sake, 
and  are  too  absurd  to  be  a  genuine  satire  upon  Athenian 
women.  These  features,  and  the  concluding  appeal  of  the 
coryphaeus  (w.  1155,  sq.),  to  remember  the  jokes,  and  not  to 
deny  the  author  his  prize  because  his  play  came  first  in  the  com- 
petition, indicate  how  much  both  poet  and  audience  had  fallen. 
The  chorus  assumes  a  leading  part  in  the  play,  but  sings  no  para- 
basis,  unless  indeed  a  choral  ode  which  is  lost  may  have  replaced 
it.  But  the  whole  complexion  of  the  piece  resembles  what 
is  called  the  Middle  Comedy,  in  which  the  chorus  disappears. 

The  play  is  difficult,  and  has  not  been  sufficiently  com- 
mented upon,  doubtless  on  account  of  the  features  which 
it  has  in  common  with  the  far  superior  and  more  earnest  Ly- 
sistrata* The  commentators  on  Plato's  Republic  have  much 
occupied  themselves  with  the  question,  what  system  or  theory 
of  socialism  the  poet  had  before  him,  as  Plato's  immortal  dia- 
logue was  not  published  till  many  years  later.  We  can  find  no 
more  specific  answer  than  to  say  that  such  a  work  had  probably 
many  predecessors,  and  that  such  speculations  must  have  been 


CH.  xxi.  THE  PLUTUS.  461 

long  in  the  air  before  they  assumed  the  definite  form  in  which 
Plato  has  transmitted  them  to  us.  For  the  history  of  Socialism 
and  of  the  theory  of  woman's  rights  the  play  is  an  early  and 
valuable  document. 

§  273.  Last  in  our  list  comes  the  Plutus,  which,  as  we  have 
it,  was  produced  Ol.  97,  4  or  388  B.C.,  in  the  poet's  old  age. 
But  we  are  informed  that  this  was  the  second  edition,  and 
that  it  was  first  played  in  408  B.C.,  before  the  Frogs.  To  this 
latter  play  it  is  remarkably  inferior  in  every  respect,  but  chiefly 
perhaps  because  it  is  of  the  tamer  type  known  as  that  of 
the  Middle  Comedy.  The  characters  are  all  general,  and 
there  is  no  chorus  beyond  a  collection  of  neighbours,  who  do 
not  interfere  in  the  action,  and  sing  no  lyrical  odes,  or  para- 
basis.  The  prominence  of  the  slave  is  another  feature  which 
allies  it  to  both  Middle  and  New  Comedy.  Politics  disappear 
altogether,  and  the  whole  object  of  the  work  is  a  dramatic  satire 
upon  the  irregularities  and  injustices  of  society,  and  upon  the 
apparently  false  distribution  of  wealth  by  the  gods.  The  worthy 
Chremylus,  having  by  the  help  of  the  oracle  discovered  Plutus, 
whom  as  an  old  blind  man  he  does  not  recognise,  but  who 
at  length  reveals  himself,  undertakes  to  have  the  god's  sight 
restored,  and  so  to  enable  him  to  choose  his  residence  amongst 
honest  men.  Poverty,  a  gaunt  female  figure,  protests  against  this 
proceeding,  and  explains  the  advantages  which  she  bestows  on 
men.  There  are  several  indications  of  a  chorus  at  the  conclu- 
sion of  each  act,  or  pause  in  the  plot,  but  these  were  either 
never  written,  or  omitted  (as  I  suspect)  in  the  revised  edition 
which  we  possess,  or  lost  by  the  carelessness  of  transcribers. 
This  last  theory  seems  very  improbable.  The  slave  in  a  long 
messenger's  speech,  only  interrupted  by  exclamations  from 
Chremylus'  wife,  recounts  the  cure  of  Plutus  in  the  temple  of 
^Esculapius — a  very  interesting  comic  picture  of  the  religious 
quackery  of  the  age.  The  rest  of  the  play  is  occupied  with  the 
appearance  of  a  sycophant  priest  and  other  characters  who  come 
to  visit  Chremylus  on  hearing  of  his  good  fortune.  The  general 
structure  of  the  play  seems  imitated  from  the  earlier  Peace.  The 
god  of  riches  corresponds  to  the  goddess  of  peace.  The 
opposing  figures  of  War  and  Poverty  are  closely  analogous. 


462  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxi. 

The  good  Hermes  in  both  plays  acts  the  mean  part  of  a  sort  of 
understrapper,  and  not  a  faithful  one,  among  the  gods.  Both 
plays  end  their  plot  early,  and  fill  up  the  remainder  with  dia- 
logues arising  out  of  the  successful  conclusion  of  the  enterprise. 
But  the  Peace  is  far  livelier  and  more  spirited  than  the  Flutus. 
The  tame  and  sober  character,  and  the  absence  of  special 
political  allusions  in  this  work,  have  made  it  an  easy  and  suit- 
able play  for  younger  students,  and  there  have  accordingly  been 
a  good  many  scholia  upon  it,  and  a  good  many  editions  in 
Byzantine  days  ;  but  there  is  no  recent  German  edition  except 
Marback's  (Leipzig,  1844). 

§  274.  The  Fragments  of  Aristophanes  (about  750)  are 
neither  long  nor  interesting.  Were  our  knowledge  of  the  poet 
confined  to  them,  we  should  be  perfectly  incapable  of  forming 
any  notion  of  his  true  character  and  transcendent  merits,  and 
this  fact  should  make  critics  more  cautious  than  they  have  been 
in  estimating  other  comic  poets,  only  known  by  the  light  of 
this  delusive  evidence  and  thus  compared  with  the  extant 
master.  The  Amphiaraus  seems  to  have  ridiculed  superstitious 
treatment  of  diseases,  like  the  scene  of  the  Plutus  just  men- 
tioned, and  may  therefore  have  been  of  that  type.  So  was  the 
dLolosikon,  a  parody  on  Euripides'  ^Eolus,  a  play  which  was 
written  without  chorus,  later  than  the  Plutus,  and  committed  to 
the  care  of  the  poet's  son  Araros.  The  Kokalos,  also  committed 
to  Araros,  was  even  considered  a  forerunner,  in  its  love  intrigue 
and  recognition,  of  the  New  Comedy  of  Menander ;  so  that 
this  type  too  was  probably  inherent  in  Greek  comedy,  and  only 
rose  to  greater  prominence  owing  to  social  causes.  All  that 
can  be  known  about  the  plots  of  the  lost  plays,  and  many  con- 
jectures besides,  maybe  found  in  the  collection  of  the  fragments 
at  the  end  of  Meineke's  second  volume.  There  is  an  equally 
good  collection  in  Dindorf  s  Poeta  Scenici,  and  many  mono- 
graphs about  them  are  cited  by  Nicolai.1 

§  275.  If  we  take  a  general  view  of  the  dramatic  resources 

shown  by  this  great  poet,  we  shall  be  somewhat  surprised  at 

the  poorness  of  his  plots  and  the  fixed  lines  of  his  invention. 

As  is  well  known,  old  Attic  comedy  cared  little  about  plots ; 

1  LG.  i.  p.  231. 


CH.  xxi.  UNIFORM  FEATURES  IN  THE  COMEDIES.  463 

any  extravagant  adventure  was  sufficient  to  give  it  scope  for 
the  development  of  character,  and  for  comic  dialogue  which 
sparkled  by  means  of  witty  repartee  and  satirical  allusion.  Like 
the  plays  of  Euripides,  which  pause  in  the  middle,  and  then 
start  with  a  new  interest,  it  is  common  for  the  Aristopha- 
nic  plays  to  work  out  at  once  the  project  of  the  principal 
actor,  and  then  occupy  the  rest  of  the  play  in  comic  situations 
produced  by  the  introduction  of  any  stray  visitor.  Examples 
of  this  design  will  be  found  in  the  Acharnians,  Peace,  Plntns, 
Wasps,  and  Birds.  The  Frogs  is  a  more  artistic  instance,  as 
the  poetical  conflict  which  ensues  upon  Dionysus'  visit  to 
Hades  is  strictly  to  the  point.  But  here  too  the  adventures  of 
Dionysus  in  search  of  a  tragic  poet  are  a  separate  play  (so  to 
speak)  from  the  scenes  in  Hades  after  his  reception  by  Pluto- 
The  Knights  and  Chuds  have  more  plot  than  the  rest,  though 
the  action  in  the  Knigfits  is  too  much  delayed  by  the  coarse 
Billingsgate  of  the  rival  demagogues. 

A  good  deal  of  sameness  may  further  be  observed  in  this, 
that  the  economy  of  the  opening  scenes  preserves  a  certain 
uniformity.  Either  the  principal  character  begins  with  a 
soliloquy,  which  explains  the  whole  plot,  as  in  the  Acharniam 
and  Clouds,  or  the  first  scene  is  a  dialogue,  in  which  one  of  the 
speakers  presently  turns  to  the  audience,  and  explains  the 
situation  by  what  may  be  called  a  delayed  prologue.1  These 
speakers  are  either  two  slaves  under  orders  ( Wasps,  Knights, 
Peace),  or  the  leading  character  with  his  slave  or  confidant 
(Frogs,  Pint  us,  Birds,  Thesmophoriaziisce).  The  Lysistrata 
and  Ecclesiaziisce  open  with  a  combination  of  both  devices. 
The  leading  character  comes  on,  but  in  expectation  of  others, 
as  in  the  Acharnians,  and  the  plot  is  presently  expounded  in  a 
conversation  with  the  new  characters.  These  considerations 
show  that,  with  all  the  wildness  and  license  of  the  poet's  ima- 
gination, he  kept  not  only  his  diction,  which  was  a  model  of 
the  strictest  Attic,  but  even  his  plots,  under  the  regulation  of 
broadly  defined  principles. 

Turning  to  his  characters,  we  find  the  same  regularity  in 
their  conception.      They  are  almost  all  elderly,  both  men  and 
1  We  have  a  tragic  example  in  the  later  Iphigcnia  of  Euripides. 


464  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE,    CH.  XXI. 

women,  and  even  when  father  and  son  are  brought  on  the 
stage  together,  as  in  the  Wasps,  the  son  impresses  us  as  already 
mature  in  age  and  good  sense.  This  arises  from  the  aristo- 
cratic temper  of  the  poet,  who  only  satirised  and  ridiculed  the 
middle  and  lower  classes,  among  whom  the  young  are  seldom 
prominent,  especially  in  war  times,  when  they  were  employed 
in  field  and  garrison  duty.  The  Athenian  democracy  is  always 
imaged  by  the  poet  under  the  guise  of  an  elderly  man,  and  all 
the  leading  characters  which  are  intended  to  be  representative 
are  very  uniform  in  type — shrewd,  somewhat  coarse,  and  not 
very  educated.  This  is  likely  to  have  been  specially  true  of 
the  Attic  countryman,  whom  he  contrasts  sharply  with  the  city 
folk.  Pheidippides  in  the  Clouds  is  the  only  portrait  he  ven- 
tures to  draw  of  a  young  aristocrat,  and  he  is  very  slightly 
sketched,  until  he  appears  transformed  into  a  Socratic  sophist. 
The  chorus  of  Knights  is  purely  political  and  impersonal,  and 
reveals  to  us  no  social  or  individual  features.  Were  we  there- 
fore reduced  for  our  knowledge  of  the  Athenian  aristocracy  to 
the  comedies  of  Aristophanes,  we  must  be  content  with  a  single 
passage  in  the  opening  of  the  Clouds,  and  we  should  be  com- 
pletely ignorant  of  any  of  their  failings  but  that  of  an  over- 
fondness  for  horses.  Yet  surely  the  young  aristocrats  were 
fully  as  open  to  satire  and  comic  travesty  on  the  stage  as  the 
old  dicasts, 

These  remarks  show  the  error  of  the  assertion  usual  in 
Aristophanes'  German  critics,  that  he  lashed  all  the  vices  and 
defects  of  Athenian  society  in  his  day.  They  ignore  that  the 
poet  was  an  aristocrat,  who  ridiculed  radicalism  and  the  ad- 
vanced democracy,  but  spared  the  vices  of  his  associates  and 
his  party.  What  a  subject  Alcibiades  would  have  afforded  ! 
Yet  in  spite  of  his  democratic  leanings,  his  high  birth  and  con- 
nections saved  him  from  any  but  stray  shafts  on  the  stage.1 
It  is  in  the  orators  that  we  find  him  painted  in  his  dark 

i  According  to  various  late  authorities,  of  whom  a  scholiast  on  Juvenal 
is  the  best,  the  Ban-rat  of  Eupolis  were  expressly  directed  against 
Alcibiades.  But  it  must  have  been  indirectly,  and  without  naming  him 
personally,  for  Plutarch  does  not  quote  a  single  passage  in  his  biography, 
nor  do  the  twenty-two  extant  fragments  contain  a  single  mention  or  even 
allusion  to  Alcibiades. 


CH.  xxi.     ARISTOPHANES  AND  EURIPIDES.  465 

colours.  I  have  already  noticed  the  constant  retrospects,  and 
longing  for  the  good  old  times,  which  characterised  all  the  comic 
poets  of  this  period.  I  will  only  add  that  in  his  late  plays 
Aristophanes  seems  to  have  laid  aside  these  aspirations  as 
hopeless,  and  applied  himself  to  the  practical  teaching  of 
union  and  forgiveness  among  the  rival  parties  in  the  agony  of 
the  last  years  of  the  war. 

As  to  his  position  in  matters  of  religion,  he  is  a  great  defender 
of  orthodoxy  against  the  new  physical  school,  and  is  never 
weary  of  attacking  Socrates  and  Euripides  for  their  breaking 
up  of  the  old  faith.  But  all  this  seems  rather  from  policy  than 
from  real  devoutness,  for  he  does  not  hesitate  to  travesty  the 
gods  after  the  manner  of  Epicharmus,  and  to  present  the  reli- 
gion of  the  people  under  a  ridiculous  form.  Though  he  per- 
mits himself  to  indulge  in  orthodox  profanity  and  ridicule 
about  the  gods,  he  feels  a  profound  difference  in  the  serious 
attacks  of  the  sceptical  school  upon  the  received  faith.  In 
this  he  was  doubtless  quite  correct,  but  it  throws  a  doubtful 
light  upon  his  seriousness  as  a  religious  thinker. 

§  276.  His  parody  of  the  tragedies  is  to  us  more  interest- 
ing. Though  commonly  aimed  at  Euripides,  there  is  frequent 
parodying  of  both  Sophocles  and  ^Eschylus,  and  of  the  less 
known  tragic  poets,  probably  much  oftener  than  even  the  scholi- 
asts detected.  Of  course  his  ridicule  of  Euripides  was  most  un- 
sparing, and  most  unjust,  but  the  latter  was  no  mere  innovator 
in  tragedy,  he  was  also  an  opponent  on  social  and  political  ques- 
tions. There  is  no  greater  proof  of  the  real  greatness  of  Euripi- 
des, than  that  his  popularity  combated  and  overcame  the  most 
splendid  comic  genius  set  in  array  against  it  during  the  period 
of  its  development  The  loose  and  irrelevant  choral  odes  of  his 
later  plays  are  doubtless  open  to  the  parody  of  the  frogs,  but  the 
very  same  change  of  taste  as  to  the  importance  of  the  choral 
interludes  made  Aristophanes  himself  diminish  and  abandon 
his  choruses,  and  even  replace  them  with  a  musical  or  orches- 
tic performance.  For  this  seems  the  meaning  of  the  word 
•%opov  inserted  in  the  pauses  of  the  later  plays,  especially  the 
Phitus.  Hence  in  this,  as  in  most  other  points,  the  same  ten- 
dencies which  modified  Euripides'  tragedies  had  their  effect 
20* 


466  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxn 

upon  the  plays  of  his  censor.  Among  the  features  of  detail, 
nothing  is  more  cleverly  ridiculed  than  those  repetitions  of  the 
same  word  which  occur  in  the  pathetic  lyrical  passages  cf 
Euripides.  Yet  this  has  been  felt  by  great  hearts  of  various 
ages,  and  by  the  still  greater  heart  of  popular  song,  to  be  a 
natural  and  poetical  enhancement  to  the  expression  of  deep 
feeling.  The  modern  poet  who  best  understands  Euripides 
has  followed  his  example  in  this  point.1  The  German  lyrist 
von  Platen,  in  his  beautiful  and  artistic  imitations  of  folk-song, 
has  reproduced  the  same  effect — an  effect  still  more  clearly  and 
universally  exemplified  in  music,  where  the  repetition  of  even  a 
single  note  often  conveys  intense  feeling. 

§  277.  Turning  from  points  of  detail  to  the  general  scope  of 
Aristophanes'  plays,  we  come  upon  a  controversy  as  to  the 
true  aim  of  comedy,  and  as  to  the  conception  which  the  poet 
formed  of  his  art.  The  passage  on  the  nature  of  comedy  in 
the  Poetic  of  Aristotle  is  unfortunately  lost,  but  if  we  can  trust 
stray  hints  on  the  subject,  his  definition  of  comedy  (which 
applied  mainly  to  Menander)  ran  parallel  to  that  of  tragedy, 
and  described  the  art  as  a  purification  of  certain  affections  of 
our  nature,  not  by  terror  and  pity,  but  by  laughter  and  ridicule. 
This  deep  moral  object  has  been  strongly  advocated  by  Klein, 
who  exalts  Aristophanes  to  a  pinnacle  attained  by  no  other 
Greek  poet.  On  the  other  hand,  Hegel,  who  without  any 
special  knowledge  has  theorised  on  the  matter  in  his  ^Esthetic, 
speaks  of  comedy  as  the  outlet  of  a  great  uncontrolled  sub- 
jectivity, which  feels  that  it  is  so  superior  to  all  ordinary  human 
affairs,  that  it  can  afford  to  laugh  them  down  and  treat  them 

.    Dances,  dances,  and  banqueting 
To  Thebes,  the  sacred  city  through, 
Are  a  care  !  for,  change  and  change 
Of  tears  and  laughter,  old  to  new, 
Our  lays,  glad  birth,  they  bring,  they  bring ! 

— Aristoph.  Apol.,  p.  266.  There  are  many  more  instances  in  this  version 
of  the  Hercules  furetis.  This  allusion  to  Mr.  Browning  suggests  the  remark 
that  he  has  treated  the  controversy  between  Euripides  and  Aristophanes 
with  more  learning  and  ability  than  all  other  critics,  in  his  Aristophanes' 
Apology,  which  is,  by  the  way,  an  Euripides'  Apology  also,  if  such  be 
required  in  the  present  day. 


CH.  xxi.      THE  LYRICS  OF  ARISTOPHANES.  467 

with  ridicule.  I  fancy  both  theories  have  their  truth  as  regards 
Aristophanes.  His  early  plays  seem  written  with  high  political 
aspirations,  and  with  a  strong  conviction  that  he  was  the 
adviser  of  the  people  for  good,  and  could  lead  them  from 
sophistry  and  chicanery  to  a  sounder  and  nobler  condition. 
This  feeling  transpires  in  his  personal  addresses  to  the  audience, 
in  his  professed  contempt  for  obscenity  and  buffoonery,  and  in 
the  serious  tone  of  his  political  advices.  As  the  war  went  on, 
and  the  people  became  gradually  impoverished  and  degraded, 
when  the  oligarchs  broke  down  in  their  attempt  to  abolish  the 
democracy,  and  the  power  of  Athens  was  ruined  by  Lysander, 
we  see  the  poet,  not  without  stray  touches  of  sadness,  adopt  a 
lower  tone,  abandon  serious  subjects,  and  turn  almost  wholly 
to  obscenity,  buffoonery,  and  mere  literary  and  social  satire. 
At  this  stage  he  may  have  been  indulging  his  '  infinite  subjec- 
tivity/ as  Hegel  chooses  to  ca^l  it,  and  may  have  felt  that  serious 
advice,  and  efforts  at  political  and  social  reform,  were  mere 
idle  dreams,  and  not  worth  treating  except  as  stuff  for  travesty. 
This  is  indeed  a  melancholy  contrast  to  the  life  of  the  extant 
tragic  poets,  all  of  whom  seem  to  have  risen  and  ripened  with 
age,  and  to  have  left  us  in  their  latest  pieces  the  noblest  and 
most  perfect  monuments  of  their  genius. 

§  278.  A  word  in  conclusion  should  be  said  concerning  the 
lyric  side  of  Aristophanes,  which  the  old  scholiasts  so  neglected, 
that  they  note  his  graceful  ode  to  the  nightingale  (in  the  Birds) 
as  a  parody  on  Euripides.  Modern  writers,  on  the  contrary, 
have  advanced  to  the  absurd  statement,  that  his  real  greatness 
was  not  dramatic,  but  lyric.  There  can,  indeed,  be  no  doubt 
that  the  lyrical  pieces  in  the  comedies  are  of  the  highest  merit ; 
nevertheless,  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  say  that  the  real  genius 
of  Sophocles  was  lyric  because  he  wrote  beautiful  lyric  odes. 
Lyric  poetry  and  the  drama  were  so  combined  in  Periclean 
days,  that  although  a  lyric  poet  might  be  no  dramatist,  every 
dramatist  must  be  a  lyric  poet.  And  we  have  reason  to  think 
that  the  occasional  lyric  pieces  of  the  great  dramatists  in  that 
day  were  far  finer  than  the  works  of  professed  lyric  poets  after 
the  age  of  Simonides.  Nevertheless,  the  true  greatness  of 
Aristophanes  ever  has  been,  and  will  be,  dramatic  greatness. 


468  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xxi. 

But  it  is  rather  in  extraordinary  fertility  and  brilliancy  of  dia- 
logue, than  in  ingenuity  of  plot,  that  he  excels. 

We  cannot  tell  whether  the  statement  of  Plato  at  the  end 
of  the  Symposium  was  seriously  meant,  that  the  composer  of 
comedy  must  have  the  same  sort  of  genius  as  the  composer  of 
tragedy,  and  that  the  same  poet  should  compose  both.  If  it 
was,  we  can  hardly  avoid  the  inference  that  it  was  meant  to 
apply  to  Aristophanes,  who  plays  a  leading  part  in  the  dialogue, 
and  whom  Plato  evidently  esteemed  at  his  real  worth.  The 
combination  of  which  he  speaks  was  not  attempted  in  classical 
days,  though  there  are  not  wanting  signs  that  Aristophanes  could 
have  composed  with  pathos  and  seriousness,  and  might  perhaps 
have  been  more  dangerous  to  Euripides  as  a  rival  than  as  a 
professed  opponent. 

§  279.  The  later  Greeks,  who  became  accustomed  to  the 
strict  form  and  the  social  polish  of  the  New  Comedy,  could  not 
bear  the  wildness  and  license  of  the  great  political  comedian. 
Aristotle  completely  ignores  him,  and  the  Old  Comedy  gene- 
rally, in  his  dramatic  theories,  and  evidently  regards  him  as 
nothing  compared  with  his  successors  in  later  days  and  in  the 
tamer  style.  Plutarch,  in  a  special  comparison  of  Old  and  New 
Comedy,  is  both  severe  and  depreciating  in  his  remarks  upon 
him.1  These  tamer  and  more  orderly  people  look  upon  the 
wayward  exuberance  of  the  Old  Comedy  with  much  the  same 
temper  as  the  French  school  of  tragedy  look  upon  the  license 
and  irregularity  of  Shakspeare.  Fortunately,  the  Alexandrian 
critics  did  not  share  these  prejudices,  and  seem  to  have 
directed  more  attention  to  this  poet  than  to  any  other  except 
Homer.2  Callimachus  collected  the  literary  and  chronological 
notices  ;  Eratosthenes,  Aristophanes,  Aristarchus  and  Crates 

1  His  little  tract  on  Aristophanes  and  Menander  is  still  worth  reading, 
in  order  to  show  how  completely  formal  excellence  and  polish  of  style  out- 
weighed the  greater  merits  of  old  comic  poetry  in  the  opinion  of  his  age. 
Aristophanes  is  blamed  for  violations  of  the  later  rhetorical  artifices,  for 
excessive  assonances,  and  for  such  matters  as  he  would  have  scorned  to 
observe,  in  his  writing  ;  moreover,  for  allowing  inconsistency  in  characters, 
which  were  with  him  only  a  vehicle  for  political  satire. 

2  The  following  information  on  the  Alexandrian  studies  is  compressed 
from  the  fuller  account  of  Bernhardy,  LG.  ii.  670. 


CH.  xxi.  MSS.  OF  ARISTOPHANES.  469 

followed  (with  others)  in  explaining  and  commenting  upon 
hard  passages.  There  seem  to  have  been  collections  of  these 
commentaries,  first  by  Didymus,  and  finally  by  Symmachus, 
who  added  Heliodorus'  theatrical  studies.  These  form  the 
older  basis  of  the  Scholia,  enlarged  and  diluted  by  later  Byzan- 
tine work,  but,  on  the  whole,  the  best  Greek  commentary  we 
have  on  any  Greek  author,  and  of  inestimable  value  in  under- 
standing the  difficult  allusions  of  the  text.  The  text  of  these 
scholia  was  first  printed  (with  nine  plays)  by  Aldus  in  1498. 
There  are  excellent  monographs  of  J.  Schneider,  Ritschl  and 
Keil  upon  them,  and  they  have  been  lately  critically  edited  by 
Dindorf.  and  by  Diibner  (Paris,  1868). 

§  280.  Bibliographical.  Far  the  best  MS.  of  both  text  and 
scholia  is  the  Ravennas  of  the  eleventh  century,  a  large  vellum 
quarto  of  192  pages,  of  which  the  margin  is  here  and  there 
badly  stained  with  damp,  so  that  the  scholia  are  often  almost 
illegible.  This  is  one  of  the  best  and  most  trustworthy  of  our 
Greek  MSS.  It  contains  the  extant  plays,  not  in  their  chro 
nological  order,  but  according  to  their  popularity,  the  first 
three  being  much  more  read  and  commented  than  the  rest, 
viz.  Plutus,  Clouds,  frogs,  Birds,  Knights,  Peace,  Lysistrata, 
Acharnians,  Wasps,  Thesmophoriazusce,  Ecclesiazusce. 

Owing  to  the  difficulty  of  reaching  Ravenna  formerly,  few 
scholars  have  seen  or  collated  this  MS.,  which  is  preserved  in 
the  public  library,  and  now  readily  shown  to  visitors.1  There 
is  a  later  MS.  at  Milan  in  the  Ambrosian  Library  which  seems 
to  correspond  with  it  very  closely,  but  which  is  not  mentioned 
by  the  principal  critics.2  There  is  besides  the  Venetus  471,  the 
6  of  the  Laurentian  at  Florence,  and  a  Parisinus  A,  which 
are  valued  by  the  editors.  Of  the  three  popular  plays  there 
are  endless  later  copies. 

As  to  editions  there  is  the  princeps  of  nine  plays  by  Aldus 
(1498),  a  handsome  folio,  followed  by  the  Juntine  in  1515, 
which  added  the  two  missing  plays  ( Thesmophoriazusce  and  Lysis- 
trata) as  an  appendix  in  1516.  Bentley,  Dobree,  Dawes,  and 

1  There  is  an  interesting  article  on  its  history  by  W.  G.  Clark,  in  the 
third  volume  of  the  Cambridge  Journal  of  Philology. 

2  This  was  shown  to  me  by  M.  Ceriani,  the  learned  librarian  at  Milan. 


470  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxr. 

Person,  all  worked  at  this  poet,  and  wrote  critical  notes  upon 
the  text,  and  in  this  direction  Cobet  (in  the  Leiden  Mnemosyne] 
has  contributed  more  than  anyone  else  to  the  purifying  of  this 
purest  of  Attic  writers.  The  best  complete  editions  in  modern 
days  are  Bekker's,  Diibner's  (Didot),  Bergk's  (Teubner), 
Dindorf  s  (Poettz  Scenict},  and  Meineke's.  Holden  has  also  pub- 
lished a  critical  text  (Cambridge,  1868),  with  the  fragments  and 
an  index  to  them,  but  unfortunately  expurgated  and  therefore 
not  useful  for  scholars.  In  addition  to  the  Greek  scholia  there 
is  a  general  commentary  of  moderate  merit  by  Bothe,  an  index 
by  Caravella,  edited  at  Oxford  (1822),  and  a  poor  Lexicon  by 
Sanxay  (Oxford,  1811).  The  principal  plays  must  be  studied 
in  the  separate  editions  I  have  noticed  under  each,  and  the 
complete  editions  are  chiefly  valuable  for  embracing  the  pieces 
which  have  not  tempted  special  editors.  There  are  German 
translations  by  Voss,  Droysen,  Donner,  and  others  ;  French  by 
Brumoy  and  by  Poinsinet  de  Sivry  (Acharnians  and  Knights)  • 
and  English,  a  good  modern  prose  version,  by  Mitchell,  in 
addition  to  the  splendid  version  of  five  plays  by  J.  H.  Frere,1 
and  the  Wasps,  Peace,  and  Lysistrata  of  J.  B.  Rogers.  There 
are  good  school  editions  of  some  of  the  plays  in  the  Cambridge 
Catena  Classicorum.  Julius  Richter  has  even  composed  a  Greek 
comedy  in  our  own  day  on  the  model  of  Aristophanes,  in  which 
he  handles  contemporary  questions.  This  learned  and  clever 
piece  is  curious  and  worthy  of  perusal. 

1  Frere's  version,  like  Mitchell's  Sophocles,  was  at  first  privately  pub- 
lished and  inaccessible  ;  it  is  now  to  be  found  in  his  collected  works.  The 
proper  preface  to  it  is  his  critique  of  Mitchell  (Works,  ii.  p.  178,  sq.). 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE   HISTORY  OF   COMEDY   FROM   ARISTOPHANES  TO 
MENANDER. 

§  281.  THERE  is  no  branch  of  Greek  literature  which  seems 
to  have  been  more  prolific  than  comedy ;  and  yet,  of  the  many 
hundreds  of  pieces  cited,  there  is  not  a  single  complete  specimen 
surviving.  We  saw  above  how  Aristophanes,  towards  the  close 
of  his  life,  produced  works  of  a  complexion  approaching  what 
is  called  by  the  grammarians  the  Middle  and  New  Comedy. 
They  have  laid  it  down  that  the  former  sort  of  comedy  was 
produced  from  about  the  period  of  the  Restoration  to  that  of 
the  battle  of  Chseronea  (390-38  B.C.).  The  period  following  is 
called  that  of  the  Neiu  Comedy. 

These  grammarians,  and  the  modern  historians  who  follow 
them,  have  sought  to  enumerate  special  points  in  which  each 
period  of  comedy  was  distinguished  from  the  rest.  But,  as  I 
have  already  remarked  (p.  433),  they  have  drawn  their  lines  of 
distinction  too  sharply.  They  assert  that  the  Middle  Comedy 
was  rather  a  character-comedy  than  a  personal  and  political 
critique  on  passing  events.  Hence  there  appear  in  the  very 
titles  the  names  of  courtesans,  of  parasites,  of  philosophers,  and 
of  literary  men — the  latter  generally  of  past  generations.  We 
find  that  parody  of  old  mythology  was  frequent,  and  there  are 
many  plays  devoted  to  the  birth  of  gods,  such  as  Atoc  yora/, 
which  ridiculed  mimetic  dithyrambs,  and  other  scenic  repre- 
sentations of  these  events.  In  this  parody  of  mythology,  and 
this  ridicule  of  general  types  of  character,  we  know  that  Epi- 
charmus  in  Sicily,  and  Crates,  Hermippus,  and  Cratinus  in 
the  Old  Comedy,  had  shown  the  way;  and  we  have  from 
'Hermippus  the  title  of  a  play  ('A0?jrdc  yovai),  which,  from 


472          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XXII. 

his  known  antagonism  to  Pericles  and  his  friends,  I  take 
to  have  been  somehow  connected  with  Pheidias'  famous  pedi- 
ment on  the  Parthenon,  representing  the  birth  of  the  goddess. 
So  also  in  the  constant  ridicule  of  Plato  and  his  school  we 
find  Alexis  and  his  fellows  only  following  in  the  track  of  Ari- 
stophanes' attack  upon  Socrates. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  their  general  tendency  to  draw  general 
pictures  of  life,  and  to  abstain  from  the  subjects  of  the  moment, 
which  makes  Aristotle  include  them  under  comedy,  which  is 
general ;  while  he  appears  to  have  classed  the  more  violent  and 
personal  Old  Comedy  under  the  head  of  perscnal  satire  (la^ftn- 
Trot'ia).  The  days  for  political  satire  had  indeed  passed 
away.  We  hear  of  no  attempts  after  the  Restoration  to  bridle 
the  license  of  personal  libels  on  the  stage,  until  the  days  when 
adulation  of  great  men  replaced  nobler  feelings.  But  the 
desire  of  economy  made  both  the  state  and  individuals  unwil- 
ling to  submit  to  the  expense  of  a  chorus,  and  the  poets  in- 
dicated the  close  of  their  acts  by  the  mere  word  Chorus  and 
a  gap,  which  was  afterwards  filled  up  by  a  musical  intermezzo. 

Another  leading  feature  in  Middle  Comedy  was  said  to 
be  the  fancy  for  discussing  riddles  (ypT^oi)  on  the  stage,  and 
many  such  appear  in  the  fragments.  But,  as  Meineke  notes, 
here  too  Cratinus  had  showed  the  way  in  his  Cleobulina.  I  do 
not  suppose  that  any  of  their  frequent  literary  criticisms  on 
poets — Athenaeus  quotes  a  special  work  on  the  subject — 
equalled  in  force  and  pungency  Aristophanes'  Frogs.  But  in- 
stead of  ridiculing  sophists  and  rhetoricians,  we  find  that  Pla- 
tonists  and  Pythagoreans,  the  luxurious  and  the  mendicant 
philosophies,  were  their  constant  topics.  There  is,  however,  clear 
evidence  in  the  fragments  that  only  the  outside  of  these  philo- 
sophies, the  dress  and  manners  of  the  school,  were  criticised. 
There  was  no  attempt  at  any  metaphysical  argument,  or  any 
serious  discussion  of  moral  tendencies.  The  same  shallow 
ethics,  or  want  of  ethics,  is  shown  in  their  far  severer  and  more 
earnest  satirising  of  courtesans.  They  never  attack  the  real 
vices  of  society,  but  warn  against  the  folly  of  carrying  them  on 
imprudently. 

§  282.  Thus  I  have  shown  that  in  every  leading  feature 


CH.  xxn.  THE  MIDDLE  COMEDY.  473 

ascribed  to  the  Middle  Comedy,  we  have  parallels  in  the  older 
masters.  What  had  they  then  peculiar  to  themselves  ?  Nothing 
I  fancy  in  subjects  except  the  neglect  of  present  politics,  the 
decay  of  moral  earnestness,  and  the  increased  prominence  of  a 
particular  kind  of  street  and  market  scenes — I  mean  those  re- 
lating to  feasts  and  good  cheer.  There  was  also  an  increased 
prominence  of  courtesan  life.  In  fact,  Antiphanes,  the  greatest 
master  of  this  comedy,  is  said  to  have  told  Alexander  the  Great, 
who  took  no  interest  in  such  things,  that  he  must  have  been 
used  to  drinking  with  these  people,  and  brawling  about  them, 
to  appreciate  comedy.  Verily  a  noble  education  ! 

If  in  subject  there  were  only  these  negative  or  ignoble 
peculiarities,  there  was  an  equal  decay  both  in  the  power  of 
their  diction,  and  the  variety  and  richness  of  their  metres.1  Of 
course  this  decay  was  gradual.  The  chorus  with  its  expensive 
training  went  out  of  fashion,  and  was  gradually  disused.  The 
aspiration  of  the  poets  was  not  to  guide  and  ennoble  their 
public.  Hence  they  studied  clearness  and  simplicity  without 
any  rigid  adherence  to  purity  of  dialect  or  poetic  choice  of 
words.  Moreover,  the  enormous  number  of  dramas  they  pro- 
duced must  have  made  careful  composition  impossible.  Athe- 
nseus  asserts  that  he  had  read  and  copied  from  more  than  eight 
hundred  plays  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  but  though  we  hear  of 
fifty-seven  poets,  many  of  them  only  left  a  couple  of  plays.  On 
the  contrary,  the  pieces  of  the  acknowledged  masters,  Anti- 
phanes and  Alexis,  were  counted  by  hundreds.  I  fancy  they 
were  .not  all  intended  for  stage  representation,  but  were  a  sort  of 
substitute  for  our  modern  novels  and  magazine  articles,  circu- 
lated among  the  reading  public  of  Athens.  It  is,  however, 
possible  that  the  great  increase  of  theatres  throughout  Greece 
may  have  created  a  large  demand  for  new  pieces. 

§  283.  It  would  lead  us  far  beyond  our  limits  to  attempt 

1  It  is  observed  that  the  shortening  of  vowels  before  )8A.  and  y\,  which  is 
never  allowed  in  Aristophanes,  occurs  in  the  Middle  Comedy  ;  so  also  the 
shortening  of  the  accusative  of  nouns  in  evs.  As  to  metres,  they  often 
used  dactylic  hexameters  ;  once  in  Antiphanes  an  elegiac  distich  occurs 
(Meineke,  iii.  82,  frag,  of  the  Milanion),  Glyconics  were  rare,  but  we  often 
find  combinations  of  dactyls  and  trochees,  at  least  one  specimen  of  Eupo- 
lidean  verse,  and  one  lyric  system  (cf.  Meineke,  i.  30x3-2). 


474         HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xxn. 

any  enumeration  of  these  poets  (thirty-nine  of  whom  are  still 
known  by  name),  nor  have  their  remains  much  literary  in- 
terest. In  no  case  are  the  fragments  sufficient  to  reconstruct 
the  plots  of  their  plays;  and,  most  unfortunately,  the  great 
majority  of  the  extant  quotations  are  those  made  by  Athen- 
aeus,  with  special  reference  to  marketing,  cooking,  and  the 
pleasures  of  the  table.  This  gives  a  tedious  uniformity  to  the 
laborious  volume  in  which  Meineke  has  collected  their  re- 
mains,1 an  uniformity  not  agreeably  relieved  by  notes  of  im- 
pure diction  from  the  Antiatticista.  Here  and  there  comes  a 
moral  reflection  from  the  collection  of  Stobseus,  and  it  is  only 
such  passages  which  show  us  the  neatness  of  point  and  smart- 
ness of  expression  which  made  them  so  popular  in  their  day. 
In  this  respect  they  regarded  Euripides  as  their  great  model. 
His  secret,  which  Aristotle  no!  ices,  of  saying  things  elegantly 
in  common  words,  was  the  perpetual  riddle  which  all  the  comic 
poets,  down  to  Menander,  tried  to  solve.  But  this  last  and 
greatest  of  the  Epigoni  in  Comedy  was  the  only  successful 
stylist. 

A  few  words  on  some  of  the  most  celebrated  of  these  poets 
will  suffice  for  such  readers  as  do  not  wish  to  make  their  frag- 
ments a  special  study.2 

§  284.  First  and  probably  greatest  among  them  was  Anti- 
phanes,  who  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  head  of  the  Middle 
Comedy.  Of  course  the  boundary  line,  as  I  have  already 
explained,  is  very  vague,  and  a  glance  into  Meineke's  account 
of  the  later  poets  of  the  Old  Comedy,  such  as  Plato,  will  show 
how  difficult  it  is  to  sever  the  Middle  from  the  Old.  In  fact, 
we  are  obliged  generally  to  acquiesce  in  the  decision  of  Suidas 
on  the  subject.  Antiphanes  was  probably  the  son  of  Stephanus, 
and,  according  to  the  sensible  Anon,  scholiast  on  Comedy,  born 
at  Athens,  though  Suidas  records  various  other  opinions.  He 
lived  from  Ol.  93  to  01.  112,  and  died  at  the  age  of  seventy-four 

1  FCG.  vol.  iii.  ;  the  general  history  in  vol.  i.  pp.  271-435. 

2  To  such  Meineke's  work  affords  all   the  materials ;  the  social  side 
of  their  plays  has  been  illustrated  in  my  Social  Greece,   in  G.  Guizot's 
Menandre  et  la  Comedie  grecque,  and  in  Klein's  History  of  the  Drama,  ii. 
206,  sij.,  from  which  I  have  taken  many  suggestions. 


CH.  xxii.  ANTIPHANES.  475 

in  Chios.  His  son  Stephanus  brought  out  some  of  his  plays. 
He  began  to  write  at  the  age  of  twenty,  and  is  credited  with  the 
enormous  number  of  260  comedies,  of  which  about  230  titles 
are  still  known.  Though  Meineke  l  has  collected  a  good  many 
examples  of  debased  diction  in  his  fragments,  he  was  celebrated 
as  a  clear  and  elegant  writer.  Among  various  criticisms  on 
tragic  language,  we  have  a  good  fragment  from  his  Poetry  on 
the  contrasts  of  tragedy  and  comedy,  which  I  quote  below.2 
The  Proverbs  (Uapoiplai)  were  cited  by  the  Tsocratic  opponents 
of  Aristotle  as  the  comic  counterpart  of  his  collection  of  pro- 
verbs. It  may  even  have  been  a  satire  on  the  philosopher. 
The  titles  of  Antiphanes'  plays  are  very  various,  including 
many  mythological  names,  many  historical  personages  and 
courtesans,  as  well  as  names  of  trades  or  professions,  and  of 
provinces  and  cities.  But  probably  owing  to  the  ostentation 
of  Athengeus,  who  desired  to  quote  as  many  various  plays  as 
possible,  we  seldom  have  more  than  one  fragment,  and  never 

1  iii.  309. 

*  Meineke,  iii.  105  : 

MaKdpi6v  Iffnv  ft  rpay<i>8(a 
iroiij^ia  Kara  Ttdvr\  e)f  yf  vpiarav  ol  \6yoi 
virb  T&V  BfarSiv  flfftv  eyvtapiff[i.4voi, 
•irplv  Kal  TII>'  eliffiv,  tLffff  v-irofivrjcrai  (J.6vov 
5e?  -rbv  iroi-nrfiv.     OlSiirovv  yap  &v  ye  ipSj, 
(01)  r&AAa  irdvr'1  tffaffiv  '  6  irar^p  Aai'oy, 
/UTJT^P  'loKdffT-rj,  Bvyarepes,  ircuSes  rives, 
ri  irei(T«0'  OUTOS,  rl  ireiroir]Kei> ;  kv  ird\tv 
ffirrj  TIS  'AAKjuatava,  Kal  ra  vaiSia 
TT.VT'  evdvs  elprjx',  Sri  /J.avels  aireicToveif 
r',)V  jUTjTfp',  ayai>aKT(at>  S'  'ASpaffros  evdsws 
f/|et,  ira\iv -T'  avirfiffi  .... 
eireitf,  Srav  /j.i]5ev  (ye*)  SVVCOVT'  elire'tv  eri, 
K0fj.i5ri  5'  airetpi)K<a(rti>  fi>  -rots  Spd/utffiv, 
atpovffiv,  Stoirep  SaKTV\ov,  r^v  /j.rixav(iv, 
Kal  rots  Otvp&OUriP  a.icoxp&W'ws  *Xet- 
'H^u^  Se  ravr'  OVK  effrtv,  oAA'  airai'-ra  Set 
evpf'ty,  6v6/J.ara  Kaivd,  ra  $i<firriiJ.eva. 
irp&repov,  ra  vvv  irapovra,  r^v  KaraffrpoQriv, 
r^v  eifffioK-fiv  •  kv  *v  ri  rovrwv  irapa\iirri, 
XpffJ.t]s  TIS,  1)  QeiScav  TIS,  eKffvplrre-rai ' 
IlTjAe?  8e  TOUT'  t|e<TTi  Kal  TevKptf  iroielv. 


4?5          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XXII. 

more  than  three,  from  any  single  piece,  among  the  900  lines 
which  remain.  Thus  all  possibility  of  judging  his  dramatic 
power  is  precluded. 

§  285.  Three  sons  of  Aristophanes  are  mentioned,  Araros, 
Philippus,  and  Nicostratos,  the  first  of  whom   contended  in 
Ol.  101  with  a  play  of  his  own,  having  already  brought  out  his 
father's  Kokalos  and  jfcolosikon  in  earlier  years  (circ.  Ol.  98). 
About  the  parentage  of  the  others,  scholars  seem  doubtful ;  the 
fragments  of  Nicostratos,  which  are  confused  strangely  with 
those  attributed  to  Philetaerus,  are  the  best.    Passing  by  Ephip- 
PUS  and  Epigenes^o.  come  to  Eubulos,\ho.  author  of  104  pieces, 
and  regarded  as  occupying  a  transition  place  between  the  Old 
and  Middle  Comedy,  about  the  earlier  half  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury B.C.     His  subjects  were  chiefly  satires  of  mythic  fables 
and  of  tragic  poets.     His  diction  is  very  pure,  and  his  verses 
seem  to  have  been  often  plagiarised  by  other  comic  poets. 

Anaxandrides  of  Camirus  produced  plays  from  Ol.  101, 
onward  (Suidas' favourite  epoch  for  these  poets).  He  was  re- 
puted a  man  of  rich  and  splendid  life,  as  well  as  of  a  con- 
temptuous and  haughty  temper,  who  destroyed  his  works  when 
they  were  not  successful.  He  was  the  author  of  sixty-five 
pieces.  Aristotle  frequently  quotes  him,  and  he  is  said  to 
have  first  introduced  the  Trapdu>wi'  00o/>cu,  so  common  in  New 
Comedy.  This  invention  is,  however,  also  ascribed  to  Aristo- 
phanes. Anaxandrides  is  also  said  to  have  composed  dithy- 
rambs. 

§  286.  Alexis  was  born  at  Thurii  just  before  its  destruction 
by  the  Lucanians,  circ.  B.C.  390,  and  came  probably  with  his 
parents  to  Athens,  where  he  was  made  a  citizen.  He  was  said 
to  have  lived  106  years,  and  to  have  been  productive  up  to  his 
death.  In  a  fragment  he  mentions  the  marriage  of  Ptolemy  Phi- 
ladelphus  (288  B.C.),  and  thus  confirms  this  tradition.  Though 
writing  in  the  style  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  he  lived  far  into 
the  period  of  the  new,  and  is  said  to  have  been  the  uncle  and 
master  of  Menander.  We  have  no  clearer  picture  of  his  mind 
and  work  than  we  have  of  Antiphanes,  though  fragments 
amounting  to  1,000  lines  of  his  245  plays  remain.  He  is 
called  by  some  the  inventor  of  the  stage  parasite,  owing  to  the 


CH.  xxii.  EPICRATES.  477 

importance  of  this  character  in  his  plays;  but  the  picture  of  one 
has  been  above  quoted  from  a  fragment  of  Epicharmus,  and 
seems  to  have  been  again  drawn  in  the  Old  Comedy  of  Eupolis. 
The  name  may  be  due  to  Alexis,  for  Araros'  play,  in  which  it 
occurred,  may  be  posterior  to  Alexis'  early  works.  Attacks  on 
the  school  of  Plato  are  frequent  in  his  fragments,1  but  we  have 
more  remarkable  passages  on  the  hetserce.12 

None  of  them  are  so  clever  as  the  fragments  of  Epi- 
crates  on  Plato's  school,  and  -his  picture  of  Lais  in  advanc- 
ing years.3  This  poet  was  an  Ambrakiot,  and  lived  early  in 

1  Meineke,  iii.  421. 

2  Cf.  frag,  of  the  Isostasion,  Meineke,  iii.  422;  also  pp.  382,  451,455, 
468. 

3  Ibiti.  p.  365  : 

Tay  i*fv  &\\as  for/;'  avXovffas  «8eTi> 
auArjrpiSay  irdVay  'Air6\\ti>vos  v6f*.ov, 

Aibs  v6/J.ov  • 
aurai  8e  fjL&vov  avKovaiv  'lepaxos  v6ftov. 

A#T7j  8e  Aaty  apyts  etm  Kal  iroViy, 
rb  /ca0'  rjfj.tpav  6p£<ra  -nlvfiv  KacrOifiv 
H&VOV  '  ir€irov9ft>ai  8e  ravrd  pot  SuKfl 
rots  aerois  •  ouroi  y&p  OTO.V  SXTIV  veoi. 
e/c  rajf  bpiav  irp&fia.T'  fffBiovffi  Kal  \ay&* 
ptTftap'  avapTrdfrvres  virb  T^S  Iff^uos  ' 
OTOLV  8e  yripa.ffKtaaiv  ^Srj  "r6re  .  .  . 
tirl  rovs  vehs  t^ovai  ireivtavrts  KO.KWS  • 
K&irfira.  roCr'  tlvai  vofj.i£frai  repay. 
nal  Aats  op6<2s  yovt>  vofni^oir''  Uv  repay  • 
auTTj  7ap  6ir6r'  ?fv  yuef  peorrby  Kal  vea, 
virb  riav  arariiptav  $v  ain]ypi<anevr], 
elSey  8'  av  aur^s  $apvd/3a£or  Oarrov  &v. 
eVel  8e  $6\ixov  TOJS  fTfffiv  fjSri  rpe'^et, 
ray  ap/iOfiay  re  8jax<*^-a  TOO  ffcafj.aros, 
iSetv  /J.(v  aurV  pa6v  tffri  Kal  irrvffat ' 
^fpXfrai  re  iravraxAcr'  ijSrj  iriOj 
Se'xerat  8e  Kal  trrar^pa  Kal  rpi<a^o 
trpoffierat  8e  Kal  ytpovra  Kal  vtov  • 
ovrta  Se  n6affbs  yeyovtv,  £><TT\  3> 
rapyvptov  £K  rf/s  xftP^s 
p.  370  :  A.  Ti  Tl\dTu>v 

Kal  Sireutriinroy  Kcl    MeveST/^t 
irpbs  riffi  vvvl  Siarpiftovcriv  ; 


478          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XXII. 

the  period  before  us.  It  were  tedious  to  repeat  the  same 
remarks  on  Anaxilas,  and  Aristophon,  and  Cratinus  junior,  and 
Amphis  :  all  these  are  but  names.  Perhaps  Timocles,  the 
satirist  of  Demosthenes,  deserves  mention,  as  apparently  the 
purest  Attic  writer,  and  the  most  pungent  in  style,  of  all  the  list. 
He  is  the  only  one  of  them  whose  scanty  remains  excite  a 
strong  regret  that  time  has  not  spared  us  more  of  his  poetry. 

iroi'o  <ppovrls,  iraiios  8e  \6yos 

SifpevvaTai  irapa  TOtffiv  } 

rd  8e  /tot  TTIWTCOS,  e?  TI  na.Tei.8ws 

%Kets,  At'lor,  vpbs  yas  '  '  • 

B.  oAA.'  oI5a  \tyeiv  vepl  rwvSe  cratpws  ' 

na.va.9riva.iois  yap  i$3w  aye 

IJ.fipa.Kiwv 

tv  yv/j.vaffiois  'AKaSrj/ifos 

i)Kov<ra  \6y\jv  a^dr 

iff  pi  yap  (pvfffus  a<popi{6/j.evoi 

&tfX<*>piC<>v  £c?uv  re  ftiov 

SfvSpuv  re  fyvffiv  \axdvwv  re  yevi). 

KO.T'  ev  rovrots  r)jv 


f£riTa£ot>  T'IVOS  tffrl  yevous. 

A.  Kal  ri  TTOT'  &p'  upiffai  TO  Kal  rlvos  yevovs 
elvai  rb  <pur6t>  •  Srt\ci>trov.  fl  tcdrourOd  TI. 

B.  TrptariffTa  fifi>  ovv  iravrts  avavSeTs 
r6r'>  iffffrriffav,  Kal  Kirfyavres 
XP&VOV  OVK  o\iyov  8i«pp6i'Ti£oi'. 

Ktfr'  f£ai<l>V7is  tri  Kvirrovrtay 
Kal  ^rjTovvTuv  TUV  /jLttpaKtuv 
\dxav6v  ns  %<pri  ffTpoyyvKov  flvai, 
voiav  8'  &\\os,  SfvSpov  8'  erepos. 
Tavra  8'  axovuv  larpis  ns 
2</ceAay  airb  yas  KawfirapS'  avrwv 


A.  ?i  irov  Sfivais  wpyifffhjffav 


TO  yap  Iv  \e<rxais  Tatfftif  TOIOVT'I 
Troif"it>  airptves. 

B.  ovS"  tue\.i)ff(i>  rols  nfipaKiois  • 
6  n\dr<av  Se  irapiav  Kal  /j.d\a  -wpdust 
ovSev  opivQeis,  ^ireTol*  auro?s 


at  Tlvos  fffTl  yevovs  • 
oi  Se  Str/pow. 


CH.  XXII.  THE  NEW  COMEDY.  479 

His  picture  of  Autocleides  sitting  like  Orestes  at  the  altar,  sur- 
rounded by  notorious  courtesans,  because  he  had  despised 
their  charms,  suggests  a  brilliant  and  effective  parody.1 

As  I  said  before,  the  enormous  fertility  of  these  poets 
compared  with  the  small  number  of  their  victories — even  Anti- 
phanes  and  Alexis  each  won  only  about  fifteen  times — makes 
it  probable  that  they  intended  their  plays  to  be  read,  and  ful- 
filled the  office  of  the  critical  press  in  our  days.  This  very 
condition  would  explain  the  slight  permanent  effect  they  pro- 
duced in  Greek  literature.  Like  our  newspapers,  these  plays 
were  only  intended  for  momentary  purposes,  and  in  the  next 
generation  their  importance  had  passed  away  for  all  except 
historians  and  antiquaries.  This,  too,  would  account  for  their 
want  of  seriousness.  They  had  retired  from  the  agora  of 
politics  :  they  had  not  yet  unclosed  the  secrets  of  domestic  life, 
with  which  their  successors  charmed  and  impressed  society. 
So  they  wandered  in  the  streets  and  markets  without  certain 
aim,  and  drew  from  the  outside  mean  and  trivial  phases  of 
human  character. 

§  287.  We  pass  to  the  New  Comedy,  to  which  the  gramma- 
rians assign  the  period  from  the  extinction  of  Greek  liberty  by 
Philip  to  the  rise  of  the  Alexandrian  school.2  Indeed,  the 
latest  poets  of  this  epoch  composed  their  plays  at  Alexandria, 
as,  for  example,  Machon,  who  is  said  to  have  instructed  the 
grammarian  Aristophanes  in  the  history  and  nature  of  comedy.3 
Sixty-four  of  these  writers  were  known,  and  many  hundred 
plays,  but  we  now  possess  only  a  volume  of  fragments,4  which 
give  us  no  better  information  than  that  afforded  concerning  the 
Middle  Comedy.  From  the  considerable  body  of  Menander's 
fragments  no  vestige  of  a  plot  could  be  recovered,  had  not 
later  critics  given  us  some  slight  sketches,  and  had  not  the 
Roman  comedians  honestly  told  us  how  they  had  borrowed 
from  him  both  plot  and  language.  But  even  here  the  unfortu- 

1  Meineke,  i.  432.  *  Ore.  340-270  B.C. 

3  This  Machon  was  also  the  author  of  a  collection  of  anecdotes  in  ele- 
gant trimeter  iambics,  called  xPe"*'»  and  often  cited  by  Athenaeus. 
*  Meineke,  vol.  iv. 


480          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.    CH.  XXH. 

nate  habit  of  filling  up  the  incidents  of  the  plot  with  scenes 
from  a  second  Greek  original  has  obscured  our  best  source. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  I  shall  not  attempt 
an  enumeration  of  the  extant  titles  and  fragments— a  dry  and 
fruitless  task,  and  one  in  which  the  dull  uniformity  of  moral 
platitudes,  commonplace  complaints  of  human  troubles,  and 
details  of  cookery,  weary  the  modern  student.  But  this  uni- 
formity is  not  altogether  to  be  regarded  as  the  vice  of  the 
New  Comedy,  but  rather  as  the  consequence  of  our  fragments 
being  either  derived  from  Athenseus,  who  searched  all  this 
literature  for  the  archeology  of  cooks  and  cookery,  or  from 
Stobseus',  and  other  collections  of  moral  sayings — a  most  un- 
fortunate and  worthless  kind  of  citation,  which  never  repro- 
duced the  dramatic  or  really  characteristic  points  of  a  play,  but 
selected  those  generalities  which  were  suitable  for  random 
quotation. 

§  288.  The  general  features  of  the  New  Comedy  as  compared 
with  its  forerunners,  have  been  carefully  described  by  many 
critics.  The  collection  of  facts  will  be  found  in  Meineke,  who  is 
always  instructive,  even  when  his  inferences  are  wrong.  He 
rightly,  however,  points  out  the  mistake  of  believing  that  these 
poets  confined  themselves  to  domestic  life  in  their  plots. 
Athenaeus'  quotations  show  that  in  Diphilus,  for  example,  the 
cook  and  parasite — leading  features  in  the  Middle  Comedy — 
were  still  prominent  figures.  The  philosophers  of  the  day, 
Epicurus,  Zeno,  and  the  rest,  were  still  the  constant  butt  of  the 
dramatists.  Mythological  parody,  and  ridicule  of  the  tragic 
poets,  were  not  extinct ;  and,  what  is  still  stranger,  and  very 
much  overlooked,  political  attacks  on  living  personages,  not 
excepting  Alexander  the  Great,  were  freely  and  boldly  made, 
as  can  be  shown  from  the  extant  fragments.  Thus  all  the  per- 
manent features  of  the  Old  Comedy  were  inherited  through 
the  Middle  by  the  New  ;  indeed,  I  am  not  sure  that  the  poli- 
tical boldness  of  Philippides,  who  flourished  about  Ol.  120,  in 
the  days  of  Lysimachus,  can  be  paralleled  anywhere  save  in 
the  Old  Comedy. 

§  289.  Yet  these  things  are  forgotten  on  account  of  the  in- 
creased importance  of  a  certain  kind  of  play,  which  had  obtained 


CH.  xxil.     METHOD   OF  THE  NEW  COMEDY.  481 

little  prominence  in  older  days — the  drama  of  domestic  life,  in 
which,  as  in  the  modern  novel,  love  affairs  were  the  almost 
universal  subject.  The  Attic  family,  as  may  well  be  imagined, 
afforded  little  scope  for  variety  of  incidents,  or  for  that  large 
psychological  study  which  makes  the  modern  novel  so  im- 
portant a  branch  of  literature.  We  are  told  that  Aristophanes, 
in  one  of  his  latest  dramas,  the  Kokalos,  had  anticipated  the 
staple  device  of  his  successors — the  mishap  of  a  respectable 
maiden,  and  her  rehabilitation  by  marriage  at  the  end  of  the 
piece.  As  seduction  was  well-nigh  impossible,  owing  to  ihe 
secluded  habits  of  Greek  maidens,1  the  poets  had  recourse  to 
violence  done  in  consequence  of  intoxication,  and  thus  they 
made  room  for  the  recognition  which  would  otherwise  have  been 
absurd.  But  we  may  well  ask  whether  this  sort  of  violence 
was  at  all  more  probable,  and  whether  the  basis  of  these  plots 
was  not  only  an  offensive,  but  an  impossible  occurrence  in 
ordinary  Attic  life.  In  the  complications  which  follow  we  have 
certain  general  types  repeated  without  much  variety,  and  repre- 
sented by  fixed  marks.  There  were  two  kinds  of  old  men,  the 
harsh,  and  the  indulgent,  father ;  two  kinds  of  sons,  the  scape- 
grace and  the  sedate ;  two  kinds  of  women,  the  injured  maiden, 
who  seldom  appears,  and  the  designing  courtesan.  The  brag- 
gart captain,  the  time-serving  parasite,  and  the  knowing  slave, 
who  serves  his  young  master  or  mistress,  and  outwits  the 
elders — these  make  up  the  remainder  of  the  characters.2 

This  is  the  sort  of  play  which  is  known  to  us  as  a  New 
Comedy,  and  which  has  made  its  impress  on  the  world  through 
the  imitation  of  the  Romans.  When  we  hear  it  repeated  that 
all  these  poets  went  back  to  Euripides  as  a  model,  and  that  he 
was  the  real  founder  of  this  drama  of  intrigue,  and  thus  of  genteel 
comedy — such  a  piece  of  criticism  conveys  to  me  no  meaning. 

1  The  seduction  of  a  married  woman  is  also  unheard  of  in  the  New 
Comedy,  and  this  should  be  insisted  on,  as  some  German  historians  have 
spoken  of  Verfiikrer  as  usual  (Nicolai,  i.  235).     Thus  the  Attic  public 
would  not  tolerate  what  the  courtiers  of  Charles  II.  enjoyed  and  modern 
Frenchmen  witness  without  revulsion. 

2  Apuleius  mentions  the  Roman  technical  names  :  leno  ferjurus,  amatot 
fervidus,  servulus  callidus,   arnica   illudens,  sodalis  opittdator,  miles  prce* 
liator  (gloriosus),  parasites  edax,  meretrix procax. 

VOL.  I. — 21 


482  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxil. 

The  style  of  Euripides,  in  which  Aristotle  praises  the  peculiar 
secret  of  saying  things  clearly  and  elegantly  with  the  plainest 
and  commonest  words,  was  certainly  the  model  of  the  New 
Comedy.  Hence  Diphilus  said  that  he  would  willingly  hang 
himself  if  he  could  be  certain  of  meeting  Euripides.  For  to 
poets  with  little  variety  of  plot,  excellence  of  style  was  of  the 
last  importance,  and  made  the  difference  of  success  or  failure. 
But,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  Euripides  was  no  more  a  model  for 
Menander  than  he  was  for  Antiphanes  or  Alexis.1  In  style  he 
was  acknowledged  a  model  not  to  them  only,  but  to  Aristo- 
phanes, their  master. 

§  290.  I  will  notice  a  few  of  the  more  important  names 
among  the  sixty-four  poets  of  this  period,  reserving  Menander 
for  the  last. 

Philemon  of  Soli  appeared  as  a  writer  about  Ol.  112,  and 
died  at  a  very  advanced  age,  in  Ol.  129,  3.  Fragments  of 
fifty- six  from  his  ninety  plays  are  extant  He  is  not  easily  dis- 
tinguishable from  his  son,  the  younger  Philemon,  to  whom 
lifty-four  were  attributed.  His  'Y7ro/3o\</za7o£  was  said  to  be 
directly  suggested  by,  and  to  have  criticised,  Aristophanes' 
Kokalos.  The  majority  of  Philemon's  fragments,  being  pre- 
served by  Stobaeus,  are  elegant,  but  not  profound,  reflections 
on  the  'changes  and  chances  of  this  mortal  life.'  In  his 
Philosophus  he  ridiculed  the  Stoic  sect,2  which  was  not  at 
all  to  the  taste  of  the  play-going  Attic  public.  His  plays 
were  used  as  models  by  Plautus.3  He  was  constantly  pitted 

1  The  importance  of  the  prologue  in  comedy  can  hardly  be  ascribed  to 
his  example,  seeing  that  it  was  the  natural  resource  for  expounding  the 
opening  situation,  and  as  such  had  been  used  by  yEschylus.  Moreover,  in  the 
absence  of  a  parabasis,  the  poet  could  find  no  other  means  of  communica- 
ting directly  with  his  audience,  as  we  see  in  Terence.     The  long  rhetorical 
debates  between  plaintiff  and  defendant,  which  Euripides  draws  out  upon 
his  stage,  were  not  only  strange,  but  positively  distasteful  to  the  later  comic 
poets. 

2  Cf.  Meineke,  iv.  29  : 

<pi\0ffo^>lav  ttaivty  yap  OVTOS  <pi\offo<f>ftt 
ireu>rjv  SiSdffKei  KO.I  /uaflrjTcbs  \a,fj.fl<ivft. 
els  &pros,  fyov  «Vxas,  iTrnrieiv  vSwp. 

8  Particularly  his  @riffavp6s  for  the  Trinummus,  and  his'Ejtiro/jos  for  the 
Mercator. 


CH.  xxii.  DIPHILUS,  APOLLODORUS.  483 

against  his  younger  contemporary  Menander,  and  often  de- 
fe'ated  him,  so  that  there  was  much  jealousy  between  them,  as 
sundry  anecdotes  testify.  Diphilus  of  Sinope  was  a  contempo- 
rary of  Menander,  and  younger  than  Philemon.  His  intimacy 
with  celebrated  courtesans,  and  his  frequent  representation 
of  them  on  the  stage,  remind  us  of  Antiphanes  and  Alexis. 
As  most  of  the  extant  fragments  come  from  Athenaeus,  they 
are  full  of  cookery,  and  these,  together  with  the  occurrence  of 
some  mythological  titles,  make  his  fragments  appear  quite 
similar  in  character  to  those  of  the  Middle  Comedy.  Though 
the  Antiattidsta  complains  of  sundry  late  words  used  by  him, 
his  style  is  pure  and  bright.  His  KXrjpovpei'oi  was  the  model  of 
Plautus'  Casina,  as  we  learn  from  the  prologue.  So  also  the 
lost  Commorientes  of  Plautus  was  copied  from  the  like  play  of 
Diphilus,  and  then  by  Terence  in  his  Addphi.  The  Rudens 
of  Plautus  was  likewise  due  to  a  play  of  Diphilus.  Our  longest 
fragment  (forty-one  lines)  is  from  the  Painter,  and  describes  a 
cook  telling  what  sort  of  banquets  he  prepares  for  his  various 
clients. 

From  Hipparchus,  Lynceus,  and  Archedicus  we  have  similar 
notes  on  cookery. 

§  291.  More  important  was  Apollodorus  of  Carystos  (there 
were  other  poets  of  the  name),  from  whom  we  have  a  long  frag- 
ment on  the  philosophy  of  pleasure,  which  Epicurus  was  then 
advocating  at  Athens.1  He  is  remarkable  as  having  afforded 
Terence  the  models  of  two  plays,  the  Hecyra  and  Phormio? 
We  may  perhaps  venture  to  offer  a  judgment  on  Apollodorus 
from  the  evidence  afforded  by  these  two  plays.  The  Phormio 
is  a  very  ingeniously  constructed  comedy  with  a  double  in- 
trigue, which  seems  not  due  to  any  contaminatio  by  Terence. 
It  is  full  of  interesting  passages  of  great  merit  as  stage 
scenes,  though  we  perceive  no  regard  whatever  towards  morals, 
and  it  is  only  the  success  or  failure  of  knavery  which  deter- 

1  Cf.  the  similar  long  extract  from  the  ffvvrp6<poi  of  Damoxenus  (seventj 
lines)  in  Meineke,  iv.  53°>  and  another  more  dramatic  scene  between  an 
angry  father  and  a  slave  in  Baton's  2vi>f£aira.Toov,  Ibid.  p.  502. 

2  The  Greek  title  of  the  latter  was  'Etri5iKa£o/j.lt>ii,  according  to  Donatus' 
correction  of  Terence's  Prologue.     Cf.  Meineke,  i.  p.  464. 


484          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XXI I. 

mines  approval  or  censure.  The  Hecyra,  which  found  great 
difficulty  in  obtaining  a  hearing,  is  very  inferior  in  power, 
the  soupirant  being  a  tearful  and  colourless  youth,  and  his 
slave  confidant  stupid  and  tiresome.  The  really  curious  fea- 
ture in  the  play  is  the  honest  courtesan,  who  sets  herself  to 
restore  peace  and  harmony  in  the  disturbed  family,  and  recon- 
cile her  former  lover  with  his  new  wife.  This  Bacchis  is  the 
Dame  aux  Camelias  of  ancient  comedy,  without  the  tragic 
points.  She  is  appealed  to  by  her  lover's  father  to  help  him. 
She  thinks  more  of  the  young  man's  future  than  of  her  own 
selfish  ends.  It  marks,  I  think,  a  real  novelty  in  the  New,  as 
compared  to  the  Middle,  Comedy,  that  a  harlot  should  be  thus 
glorified.  For  all  through  the  Middle  Comedy,  and  generally 
in  the  New,  they  were  brought  upon  the  stage  with  a  full 
display  of  their  moral  ugliness. 

Of  Philippides1  forty-four  plays  fifteen  titles  remain.  There 
is  nothing  to  add  to  what  I  have  observed  concerning  him 
already,  except  that  a  psephism  honouring  his  patriotism  was 
found  in  the  theatre  at  Athens  in  the  excavations  of  1862. 
Our  principal  interest  in  Posidippus,  who  came  immediately 
after  Menander,  is  the  splendid  sitting  portrait  statue  of  him, 
now  in  the  Vatican  at  Rome,  which  represents  him  as  a  care- 
worn, thoughtful  philosopher,  not  without  traces  of  humour 
between  the  lines.1  Demophilus  is  only  known  by  the  record 
of  Plautus,  v;ho  took  his  Wild  Ass  for  a  model  in  his  Asinaria. 

§  292.  I  will  now  close  this  barren  enumeration,  merely  re- 
marking that,  owing  to  the  likeness  of  subject  and  treatment, 
the  same  titles  were  as  frequently  used  by  different  comic  poets 
as  we  formerly  noted  common  titles  used  in  tragedy.  We 
have  Adelphi,  Epidicazomeni,  and  Synephebi,  and  Philadelphi, 
and  Anargyri,  and  a  host  of  other  such  names.  The  same  rule 

1  There  is  an  interesting  protest  against  the  tyranny  nf  the  Attic  purists 
in  \\\sfrag.  incert.  2  : 

'EAActs  /j.fv  fort  /j.ta,  ir6\tis  8£  irAefoves 
rr&  /tec  arrtKlfrts,  rjv'iK  Uv  ipwv^v  \fyys 
a\nov  rlv,  ol  8'  "EAAijj/es  e\hr]vl£oftfv 
fi  irpocrS turpl ftuv  ffv\\a.&ais  Kal  ypd/j./j.affn> 


CH.  xxn.  MENANDER.  485 

applied  to  characters  in  the  plays.  It  is  one  of  the  remarkable 
negligences  of  the  New  Comedy,  that  it  did  not  seek  to  fix  a 
peculiar  and  successful  picture  of  character  by  giving  it  a  fixed 
name,  and  so  handing  it  down,  as  it  were,  with  its  trade- mark 
to  posterity.  The  names  of  characters,  Simo,  Chretnes,  Pam- 
philus,  Davus,  Syrus,  Sostrata,  &c.  were  so  indifferently  applied, 
that  the  Roman  imitators  changed  them  without  any  care.  They 
were  like  the  ordinary  names  set  to  the  figures  in  the  social 
comedies  which  Mr.  Du  Maurier  draws  in  Punch.  These  little 
sketches  have  indeed  a  great  deal  in  common  with  the  New 
Comedy.  In  both  it  is  not  the  character,  but  the  situation,  not 
the  person  who  speaks,  but  the  thing  said,  which  is  the  matter  of 
impoitance.  Hence,  though  the  ordinary  characters  of  society 
constantly  reappear,  and  so  produce  uniformity  of  colour,  they 
are  not  distinct  individuals  belonging  to  each  class,  and  there- 
fore not  worth  being  noted  by  a  special  and  exclusive  name. * 

§  293.  We  may  fitly  close  our  chapter  on  Comedy  with  a 
notice  of  MENANDER,  the  acknowledged  master  and  representa- 
tive of  the  period.  He  was  an  Athenian  by  birth,  the  child  of 
Hegesistrataand  of  Diopeithes,  the  general  whom  Demosthenes 
defended  in  his  speech  On  the  Chersonese.  In  the  very  year  of 
this  speech,  342  B.C.,  Menander  was  born.  He  was  fortunate 
in  obtaining  the  friendship  of  Epicurus,  and  probably  of  Theo- 
phrastus,  in  whose  school  psychological  studies  of  charac 
ter  were  prosecuted  with  much  care.  Critics  who  accept  the 
extant  Characters  as  Theophrastus'  work,  have  compared  its 
appearance  in  the  days  of  Menander  with  the  like  association 
between  the  Caracteres  of  La  Bruyere  and  the  comedies  of 
Moliere.  The  philosophic  intercourse  of  his  friends  alternated, 
in  Menander's  case,  with  indulgence  in  all  the  pleasures  of 
sense.  He  was  exceedingly  luxurious  and  devoted  to  women, 
so  much  so  that  his  connection  with  Glycera  is  not  less 
renowned  than  his  intimacy  with  Epicurus.  It  is  indeed  the 

1  This  is  the  case  even  in  Menander's  famous  play  of  the  Stiperstitiom 
Man  (AeunSat/jicw).  We  happen  to  know  that  the  leading  character  was 
called  Pheidias;  nevertheless,  in  none  of  the  references  to  this  play,  and  to 
its  excellence  as  a  psychological  drawing,  do  we  hear  of  '  the  Pheidias  of 
Menander. ' 


486         HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.   CH.  xxn. 

weakest  point  in  Epicurus'  system,  that  during  his  life,  and 
while  he  was  there  to  correct  it,  the  lowest  and  most  sensual 
interpretation  was  given  to  his  doctrine  of  Utility.  He  called 
it  Pleasure  (>/c>o»^),  and  his  contemporaries  took  him  at  his 
word. 

Menander  brought  out  his  first  comedy  the  year  of  Demos- 
thenes' and  Hypereides'  death  (322  B.C.),  and  so  a  new  genius 
in  poetry  arose  to  survive  the  last  great  masters  in  prose.  But 
it  was  no  new  kind  of  poetry  ;  it  was  only  a  perfection  of  the 
already  fashionable  form.  Doubtless  the  friend  of  Theophrastus 
studied  the  tracts  of  Aristotle  on  poetry,  and  we  know  that  Men- 
andefs  drama  was  the  very  kind  of  play  which  corresponded  to 
Aristotle's  theory.  The  poet  won  his  first  prize  in  321  B.C. 
with  the  'Opy^,  and  from  that  time  brought  out  in  rapid  suc- 
cession 1 08  plays.  He  enjoyed  the  favour,  and  suffered  from 
the  suspicion,  of  the  autocrats  who  then  ruled  Athens,  but 
doubtless  found  means  to  conciliate  those  in  power,  as  he  was 
essentially  a  courtier,  and  fond  of  the  splendour  of  high  society. 
He  was  drowned  while  bathing  in  the  Peiraeus  at  the  age  of 
fifty-two.  The  Athenians  erected  him  a  tomb  near  the  ceno- 
taph of  Euripides,  the  older  poet  whom  he  most  loved  and 
imitated. 

Our  information  on  the  plots  of  Menander  is  scanty,  but 
sufficient  for  a  general  estimate.  I  am  not  aware  that  Plautus 
ever  distinctly  mentions  him  as  his  model,  and  perhaps  to  the 
older  and  ruder  Roman  master  the  plays  of  Philemon  offered 
greater  facilities  for  transference  to  a  foreign  stage.1  On  the 
other  hand,  Terence,  living  in  a  more  polished  circle,  was 
evidently  anxious  to  produce  the  acknowledged  master  of  style, 
Menander,  in  Roman  dress,  but  found  the  amount  of  incident 
so  insufficient,  that  he  ordinarily  worked  up  two  plots,  or  scenes 
from  two  plays  of  Menander,  in  each  of  his  comedies.  We 
know  this  to  be  the  case  even  in  the  Eunuchus?  and  in  the  Self- 

1  The  Stichus  and  Bacchides  are,  however,  said  to  be  derived  from  the 
Philadelphi  and  Double  Deceiver  (Sis  e^avaroav)  of  Menander. 

2  Cf.  the  Prologue,  v.  30,  on  his  obligations  to  the  ic6\a£.     We  learn 
from  an  old  note  on  Persius,  Sat.  v.  161,  sq.,  where  a  passage  is  adapted 
from  Menander's  Eunuchur,  that  Terence  also  changed  all  the  names  of 
the  characters. 


CH.  xxii.  MERITS  OF  MENANDER.  487 


Tormentor  (eavrov  rifjujpovfiEvoe),  which  are  professedly  based 
on  the  like-named  plays  of  Menander.  The  grammarian  ^Elius 
Donatus,  however  (in  his  notes  on  Terence),  and  Aulus  Gellius  l 
have  saved  for  us  sketches  (with  extracts)  of  three  arguments  : 
the  Treasure,  the  Apparition?  and  the  TrXoKiov.3  The  last 
story  was  treated  by  other  dramatists,  and  much  resembles  that 
of  the  Hecyra. 

These  plots,  such  as  we  have  them,  offer  so  few  distinctive 
features,  they  are  so  homogeneous  with  the  plots  borrowed 
from  Philemon,  Diphilus,  and  Apollodorus,  that  we  may  safely 
assert  Menander's  superiority  did  not  consist  in  ingenuity  of 
invention.  The  secret  of  his  success  was  in  his  more  elegant 
handling  of  the  materials  and  devices  common  to  other  poets. 
He  must  have  stood  to  them  in  the  same  sort  of  relation  that 
Terence  did  to  other  Roman  dramatists.  A  critic  tells  us  that 
Philemon  worked  up  his  dialogue  with  such  care  as  to  be 
superior  for  reading  purposes,  and  that  on  the  stage  only  could 
Menander  be  fully  appreciated.  This  remark  does  not  agree 
with  the  fact  that  Menander  was  in  after  days  chosen  for  the 
reading  lessons  of  growing  boys  and  girls.  But  there  is  so 
much  of  a  calm  gentlemanly  morality  about  his  fragments  ; 
he  is  so  excellent  a  teacher  of  the  ordinary  world-wisdom  — 
resignation,  good  temper,  moderation,  friendliness  —  that  we  can 
well  understand  this  popularity.  He  reflected,  if  not  the  best, 
at  least  the  most  polite  and  refined  life  of  the  age  ;  and  he 
reflected  it  so  accurately  as  to  draw  from  an  admirer  the 
exclamation,  '  O  life,  O  Menander,  which  of  you  has  imitated 
the  other  ?  ' 

We  have  no  means  of  judging  more  closely  the  poet's 
economy.  We  know  that  he  reproduced  the  prologue  of 
Euripides  so  accurately,  that  he  even  used  the  various  per- 
sonages —  from  protagonists  to  allegorical  figures  —  to  which  the 

1  Noct.  Att.  ii.  23. 

2  The  <j>dfffj.a  of  Menander  had  been  produced  at  Rome  by  Luscius 
Lavinius,  to  which  Terence  alludes  in  the  prologue  of  his  Eunnchiis.     In 
a  note  Donatus  gives  a  brief  sketch  of  the  story. 

3  Whether  a   proper  name,  or   the    necklace  by    which  the   maiden 
Pamphila  is  recognised,  remains  uncertain. 


488          HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  xxn. 

tragic  prologues  had  been  entrusted.  The  very  numerous  frag- 
ments which  are  still  incompletely  collected,  even  by  Meineke, 
are  partly  from  Stobaeus  and  Athenaeus,  partly  from  scholiasts 
or  other  Greek  authors,  partly  from  the  notes  of  Donatus  on 
Terence.  Thus  the  notes  on  the  prologue  of  the  Latin  Andria 
tell  us  of  the  openings  of  that  play  and  the  Perinthia,  from  which 
Terence  patched  together  his  comedy,  and  in  some  dozen  other 
passages  Donatus  gives  the  Greek  original  for  a  Latin  phrase. 
The  Fewpyoc,  the  4>u<rjuer,  the  Qijvavpoc,  the  Mt/roi/juevoc,  the  Ilf- 
piK£tpo[*ti'r),  the  Mi/Toyui'»;e  are  all  noted  as  celebrated  plays.  So 
was  the  Superstitious  Man  (beurtdaifivr),  from  which  Plutarch  is 
supposed  to  have  borrowed  in  his  tract  of  the  subject1  To 
this  the  Priestess  afforded  the  female  parallel.  Perhaps  the 
most  brilliant  was  the  Thais,  in  which  the  manners  and  cha- 
racter of  that  personage  were  painted  with  thorough  experience 
as  well  as  genius.  The  opening  words  of  the  prologue  are 
preserved.2  There  is  a  good  specimen  of  his  gentle  pessimism 
in  the  Thesphorumena?  I  quote  below  a  few  more  fragments.4 

1  Meineke,  iv.  p.  100. 

'E/io!  /j.fv  ovv  aeiSe  T0ia6rriv,  Bed, 
Bpacrelav,  upaiav  re  Kal  TriOav^v  a/to, 
aSiKOvaav,  airoKhttovffav,  alrovaav  irvKvd, 
ovSevbs  tpcaffav,  itpoairoiovfi,twv  8'  Set. 

*  Mein.  p.  134. 

4  Ibid.  vol.  iv.  p.  149  : 

fifyirjv  ty<i>  TOIIS  ir\ovfflovs,  &  $ap('a, 
ols  fify  rb  Savti&ffQai  vpofffffnv,  ov  ffTfVfiv 
rets  VVKTCIS,  ovSf  ffTpefyOfiivovs  &t>u>  Karoo 
o1fj.oi  \fyfiv,  rjSvv  8e  Kal  rrpa6v  nva 
vwov  KadevSftv,  aAAei  rSiv  TTTCOXUV  nva. 
fvvl  Sf  teal  rovs  paKaplovs  Ka\ovfj.evovs 
11/j.as  6pca  irovovvras  rj/j.?v  £ft.<peprj. 
ap'  fffrl  crvyyeves  n  \virri  Kal  /3los  ; 


rdpfffnv,  airoptp  ffvyKaray^pdffKfi  fticp. 
Ibid.  p.  211  : 

TOVTOV  evrvxeararov  Ae'yw, 
8(TTij  6f<ap4i<ras  aXvvtas,  Ilap/teVctfc, 
TO  ff(fj.va  TOUT'  aTrri\8fv,  86tv  ?iX9tv,  TOX«{, 
rbi/  ?i\iov  rbv  Koiv6v,  affrp",  vScap,  viffi, 
vvp  •  raura  K&V  e/carby  trr/  jStys  del 


CH.  XXII.  STUDIES  ON  MENANDER.  489 

Attacks  on  marriage,  assertions  of  the  supremacy  of  For- 
tune, advices  on  good  manners  —  these,  expressed  with  the  great- 
est neatness  and  clearness,  and  in  the  new  Attic  dialect  of 
the  better  classes  of  his  day,  made  Menander  the  delight  of 
succeeding  generations.  The  purists  indeed  attacked  him  for 
deviations  from  the  strict  laws  of  Attic  speech  ;  but  more 
sympathetic  critics  extolled  his  style  as  far  superior  even  to 
that  of  Demosthenes.  The  contrast  to  the  latter  was  indeed 
remarkable,  and  brings  out  one  leading  feature  in  the  diction 
of  the  New  Comedy  —  its  utter  avoidance  of  rhetoric.  To  ears 
wearied  with  the  periods  of  Isocrates,  Demosthenes,  and  all  the 
herd  of  their  inferior  followers,  the  ease  and  natural  grace  of 
Menander  must  have  been  truly  fascinating.  Even  Aristotle's 
uncouthness  must  have  been  a  pleasant  relief. 

§  294.  Accordingly  Menander  was  widely  studied.  Aristo- 
phanes of  Byzantium  commented  specially  upon  him,  echoed  by 
Didymus.  The  rhetor  Alciphron,  in  the  second  century  A.D., 
composed  an  elegant  correspondence  between  the  poet  and  his 
mistress  Glycera,  in  which  he  utilised  the  plays.  Plutarch  drew 
out  a  comparison  of  Aristophanes  and  Menander,  in  which  he 
depreciates  the  wild  exuberance  of  the  older  poet  and  extols  the 
elegance,  the  terseness,  and  the  literary  finish  of  his  later  rival. 
Moral  gnomes,  expressed  in  single  verses,  are  still  extant  in 
collections  amounting  to  750  lines,  many  of  them  no  doubt 
spurious.  These,  and  the  first  score  of  the  fragments  of  uncer- 
tain plays  (in  Meineke's  collection),  are  the  most  characteristic 
of  Menander's  philosophy. 

We  are  told  that  his  plays  were  known  in  Byzantine  days, 


ttyet  irapdvTa,  K&V  fviavroiis  <T(p68p'  6\tyovs, 
<T€/j.v6Tfpa  Tovrcav  erepa  5'  OVK  ttyei  iror4. 
flaviiyvpiv  v&fjua6v  nv'  flvai  rov  xpovov, 
8v  (pri/j.i,  rovrov  fy  '•jriSrtfj.iav,  fv  $ 
iox,\os,  ayopd,  K\€irrai,  Kv&t?ai,  S'.arpi/Sai- 
tu/  Trpcarov  airlys  Kara\vfffis,  fie\-riova. 
f<p6Si  fxcav  oL7ri)A.0es  fxOpbs  ovSevi  • 
b  TTpocrSiaTpifiGiv  8'  fKoiriafffv  cwroAeVay, 
KzKcas  Tf  yrjpcav  fvSffjs  rov  yiyvercu, 
ptfi.ft6fi.fvos  fx^pobs  evp',  tire/3ov\ev9i)  iroBev, 
OVK  fiiBavdrtiis  a.Trri\Oev  (\dwv  els  xf^1"3"- 
21* 


490  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  CH.  XXII. 

and  they  were  certainly  used  by  Eustathius  when  composing 
his  commentary  on  Homer  (circ.  1160  A.D.).  Leone  Allacci 
even  speaks  of  twenty-four  comedies  being  extant  at  Constan- 
tinople in  the  seventeenth  century.  And  this  is  not  incon- 
sistent with  the  account  of  Demetrios  Chalkondylas,  who  says 
that  the  MSS.  of  Menander  and  Philemon,  together  with  the 
erotic  poems  of  the  old  lyric  poets,  were  destroyed  by  Byzantine 
emperors  at  the  instigation  of  zealot  monks,  who  desired  to 
replace  them  with  the  effusions  of  Gregory  Nazianzen.  A  stray 
copy  might  easily  survive  such  a  persecution.  But  as  yet  all 
search  for  the  plays  of  Menander  in  Greek  convents  has  been 
unavailing. l 

I  confess  to  greater  regret  for  the  splendid  old  lyrists, 
Alcaeus,  Sappho,  Mimnermus,  than  for  this  later  model  of 
exquisite  style.  His  plays  would  have  been  excellent  for  school 
reading ;  they  would  have  inspired  endless  imitations  among 
the  moderns  ;  they  would  have  shown  us  what  was  the  best  and 
purest  literature  which  the  Attic  decadence  was  able  to  pro- 
duce. But  no  modern  critic  would  have  ventured  to  endorse 
the  judgment  of  Plutarch,  and  rank  him  anywhere  on  a  par 
with,  not  to  say  above,  Aristophanes.  Both  poets  were/r/Vw; 
inter  pares,  standing  out  among  contemporaries  not  recognised 
as  inferior  till  the  verdict  of  posterity  was  added  to  the  doubt- 
ful judgment  of  their  own  age.  But  the  men  of  Aristophanes' 
day  were  indeed  giants  ;  those  of  Menander's  only  showed 

1  A  fragment  copied  years  ago  by  Tischendorf  from  a  very  old  MS.  in 
the  East,  has  been  lately  published  by  Cobet  in  the  Mnemosyne,  and  is  dis- 
cussed in  the  eleventh  volume  of  Hermes  by  Gomperz,  and  by  Wilamowitz- 
Mollendorf.  It  turns  out  to  be  an  additional  scrap  of  the  Aei(r<8ai/ta>r, 
and  Wilamowitz  endeavours  to  patch  it  up  with  the  remaining  fragments 
into  a  scene.  But  this  combination  is  doubtful,  and  we  still  have  no  rem- 
nant of  Menander's  dramatic  art,  though  we  know  so  much  about  his 
style  and  about  his  philosophy. 

The  fragment  of  Euripides  alluded  to  above  (p.  380)  has  since  been 
published  by  H.  Weil  for  the  Societe  pour  r encouragement  des  etudes 
grecques,  and  is  an  interesting  speech  of  forty-four  lines,  apparently  from 
the  Temenida,  There  are  lesser  fragments  in  .^schylean  style  on  the  same 
papyrus.  These  discoveries  still  lead  us  to  look  to  Egypt  as  the  most  likely 
source  of  supplying  us  with  lost  Greek  treasures. 


CH.  xxn.      CLOSE  OF  THE  CLASSICAL  EPOCH.        491 

how  strong  and  thorough  was  the  culture  which  in  art  and 
literature  outlived  the  decadence  of  the  nation. 

§  294.  With  Menander  closes  the  classical  age  of  poetry  in 
Greece.  Shortly  after  his  death,  the  national  centre  of  gravity,  as 
regards  learning,  shifted  to  Alexandria,  and  there  the  latest  poets 
of  the  New  Comedy  brought  out  their  plays.  Nor  do  we  hear 
of  any  regrets  at  the  transference.  The  poetry  of  the  Alex- 
andrian age  was  not  without  flashes  of  genius,  but  on  the. 
whole  it  has  not  maintained  the  standard  of  Attic  culture. 
Whenever  a  particular  poet,  such  as  Apollonius  or  Theocritus, 
seemed  worthy  to  be  ranked  among  the  mightier  dead,  I  have 
exceeded  my  plan,  and  have  spoken  of  him  briefly  in  con- 
nection with  the  corresponding  form  of  classical  poetry.  The 
criticism  of  Alexandrian  grammarians  has  constantly  occupied 
us  in  connection  with  Homer  and  the  other  poets  whom  they 
emended  and  expounded.  But  to  write  a  history  of  Alexan- 
drian literature  is  a  task  of  a  different  kind  from  that  which  I 
have  undertaken,  and  I  therefore  remand  it  to  some  future 
day,  or  to  some  abler  hand  than  mine.  The  social  life  of  the 
Greeks  under  Alexander  and  the  Diadochi  yet  remains  to  be 
written,  and  for  that  purpose  the  voluminous  remains  of  the 
epoch  afford  the  most  interesting  materials ;  but  this  too  is  a 
huge  subject  which  deters  the  serious  student  by  its  vastness 
and  its  intricacy. 

But  in  a  companion  volume  I  have  traced  the  history  of 
Greek  prose  literature  within  the  same  classical  limits. 


APPENDIX   A.' 


ON   THE   LANGUAGE   OF  THE   GREEK   EPIC   POETS,   AND   MORE 
ESPECIALLY   OF  THE   ILIAD   AND   ODYSSEY. 

IN  determining  the  age  and  character  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
the  most  certain  and  important  evidence  to  which  we  can 
appeal  is  the  language  of  the  poems.  Here  there  can  be  no 
room  for  the  individual  taste  or  fancy  of  the  critic  ;  the  conjec- 
tures and  probabilities  of  the  '  higher  criticism/  as  the  Germans 
call  it,  have  to  make  way  for  solid  facts.  If  we  know  the  age 
and  locality  of  a  particular  word  or  grammatical  form,  we  know 
also  the  limit  of  time  to  be  assigned  to  the  passage  in  which  it 
occurs,  as  well  as  the  geographical  horizon  of  the  author.  A 
form  like  cicw^,2  instead  of  the  older  afcKwr,  could  not  have 
come  into  existence  until  all  recollection  of  the  digamma  had 
disappeared,  while  the  ^Eolisms,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  occur 
here  and  there  in  Homer,  point  to  an  early  connection  of  epic 
poetry  with  the  ^Eolic  towns  of  Asia  Minor. 

1  By  way  of  proper  conclusion  to  my  review  of  the  Epic  Literature  of 
the  Greeks,  I  have  asked  Professor  Sayce  to  allow  me  to  print  his  sum- 
mary of  the  results  of  linguistic  criticism  on  the    text  of  Homer.     It  will 
be  seen  that  they  agree  substantially  with  those  at  which  I  had  arrived  on 
historical  and  literary  grounds — I  mean  the  first  origin  of  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  as  complete  poems  at  the  age  when  writing  and  the  profession 
of  literary  composition  became  possible.     This  date  we  place  at  or  near  the 
opening  of  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  though  the  poems  as  we  now  have  them 
show  marks  of  much  recension  by  later  Ionic,  and  of  still  more  by  Attic 
hands.   I  will  only  add  that  our  agreement  was  not  the  result  of  conference, 
but  quite  unexpectedly  produced  by  the  independent  study  of  two  distinct 
sources  of  evidence — the  linguistic  and  the  philological.     I  need  not  here 
insist  upon  the  points  in  which  we  do  not  agree. 

2  //.  E  366 ;  Od.  7  484. 


494  APPENDIX  A. 

Thanks  to  Comparative  Philology  and  the  discovery  and 
accurate  study  of  numerous  inscriptions  during  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century,  the  history  of  the  Greek  language  and  its  dialects 
is  now  fairly  well  known.  We  can  tell  with  certainty  what 
sounds  and  grammatical  forms  are  later  than  others,  what  are 
the  dialects  to  which  each  must  be  referred,  what  words  must 
be  regarded,  not  as  the  creations  of  a  living  speech,  but  as  the 
artificial  products  of  a  learned  language.  Thus  a  word  like 
tViciX^tvoc,1  which  preserves  a  lingering  trace  of  the  original 
sibilant  we  find  in  the  cognate  Latin  salio,  is  plainly  of  older 
date  than  the  contracted  tTr/iX/^oc,2  in  which  all  such  trace 
has  vanished.-  Thus,  again,  the  form  £vro<ri'yaioe,  which  is 
found  twenty-one  times  in  the  Iliad  and  fifteen  times  in  the 
Odyssey,  and  in  which  the  initial  digamma  of  its  second  com- 
ponent element  (Greek  fwdlbt,  Sanskrit  vadli)  has  been  assimi- 
lated to  the  preceding  nasal,  belongs  to  the  yEolic  dialect ; 
while  the  form  eiVo<r/</>uAXoe,  which  is  found  twice  in  the  Iliad  3 
and  once  in  the  Odyssey,4  declares  itself  to  be  Ionic  by  its 
initial  diphthong.  And  thus,  finally,  a  form  like  hiaaro,5  from 
dpi,  the  Latin  ire,  has  evidently  been  coined  for  merely 
metrical  reasons  after  the  analogy  of  words  like  ttinov  and 
Ififfaro  (from  vid,  l  to  wit '),  where  the  hiatus  really  represents  a 
lost  digamma. 

A  close  examination  of  the  language  of  Homer  shows  that 
it  is  a  mosaic  in  which  words  belonging  to  different  ages  and 
three  different  dialects — JEolic,  Ionic,  and  Attic — are  mixed 
together  in  such  a  way  as  to  prove  it  to  be  an  artificial  dialect, 
never  really  spoken  by  the  people,  but  slowly  elaborated  by 
successive  generations  of  poets  for  the  needs  of  epic  composi- 
tion. In  its  present  form  it  cannot  be  earlier  than  the  seventh 
century  before  the  Christian  era— the  age,  in  fact,  to  which 
Euphorion  and  Theopompus  assigned  Homer.  Let  us  review 
as  shortly  as  we  can  the  evidence  on  which  these  assertions  are 
based. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  staple  of  the  Homeric  dialect  is 

1  //.  H  15  ;  Od.  o>  320.  2  //.  H  260,  A  421,  M  404  ;  Od.  {  22O. 

1  //.  B  632,  757.  «  Qd.  i  22. 

5  n>  0415. 544;  Od.xSg- 


GENITIVAL  FORMS.  495 

Ionic,  but  Ionic  of  three  different  periods,  which  may  be  con- 
veniently termed  Old  Ionic,  Middle  Ionic,  and  New  Ionic.  By 
New  Ionic  is  meant  the  language  of  Ionia  as  it  existed  in  the 
time  of  Herodotus,  and  of  the  greater  part  of  the  Ionic  inscrip- 
tions we  possess ;  and  it  maybe  considered  to  date  back  as  far 
as  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  to  which  two  or  three 
inscriptions  belong.  For  both  Old  and  Middle  Ionic,  we  have 
only  the  Homeric  poems  themselves,  the  older  grammatical 
forms  of  which  can  be  determined  by  a  comparison  with  Sans- 
krit, Latin,  and  the  other  allied  languages.  The  New  Ionic 
genitive  singular  in  -ov,  for  example,  presupposes  an  older  uncon- 
tracted  genitive  in  -oo,  and  this  again  must  be  connected  with  the 
Sanskrit  -asya,  which,  after  the  usual  Greek  change  of  y  into  a 
vowel  and  loss  of  the  sibilant,  would  have  taken  the  form  of 
-oio.  Now  in  Homer,  Besides  the  New  Ionic  genitive  in  -ov,  we 
also  find  the  older  form  in  -nto,  as  well  as  in  a  few  instances  the 
intermediate  form  in  -oo.  Examples  of  the  latter  will  be  seen 
in  such  phrases  as  'IXloo  irpoTrapoidev,1  'Aio\oo  K\VTO.,Z  and  oo 
K-paroc,3  where  the  ignorance  of  copyists  has  introduced  into 
the  text  the  impossible  forms  'IXiou  and  ouv,  and  by  reading 
'AtoXou  has  ruined  the  metre  of  the  passage  in  the  tenth  book 
of  the  Odyssey.4  The  discovery  of  these  Middle  Ionic  geni- 
tives and  the  consequent  restoration  of  Homeric  grammar  and 
metre  are  due  to  Comparative  Philology. 

It  would  be  both  tedious  and  useless  to  multiply  instances 
of  this  juxtaposition  in  Homer  of  forms  which  belong  to  different 
stages  in  the  growth  of  the  Ionic  dialect.  Thus  we  have  the 
older  genitive  plural  vvfupawr,  where  the  sibilant,  which  appears 
as  r  in  the  Latin  nymphanim  for  nymphasum,  has  been  dropped 
between  the  two  vowels  in  accordance  with  Greek  custom,  and 
by  the  side  of  wpfyautv  we  have  also  the  later  rvpfyiwv  with  a 
shortened  vowel,  and  the  still  later  contracted  rvp.<b&v.5  Thus, 

1  II.  O  66.  *  Od.  K  60.  8  Od.  a.  70. 

4  See  also  //.  B  518,  T  340,  I  137,  279,  A  130,  715  ;  Od.  o  334,  »3I3, 
396,  <p  124,  149.  Ahrens  was  the  first  to  discover  this  form  (Rhdn.Mus.  ii. 
161). 

5  The  old  genitive  in  -dow,  like  most  archaic  forms  in  Homer,  always 
occupies  a  fixed  place  (except  in  //.  2  364  and  fl  615,  and  in  the  case 


496  APPENDIX  A 

too,  along  with  the  Old  Ionic  vrjoc,  where  the  initial  vowel 
represents  the  long  vowel  and  digamma  of  the  Sanskrit  n&v-as 
and  Latin  nav-is,  we  meet  the  shortened  New  Ionic  reoc  ;  and 
the  datives  rj.xai  and  yiipdi l  stand  by  the  side  of  the  abbrevi- 
ated >/pw  and  y»V>?.2  When  we  find  the  late  contracted  ^Xtot,-3 
with  the  erroneous  Attic  aspiration,  we  may  feel  sure  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  passage  of  much  more  modern  date  than 
the  phrases  and  formulae  which  contain  the  older  j/e'Xtoe  (for 
»/<re'Xioc,  the  Old  Latin  Aurelius  or  Auselios,  from  the  root  nsh, 
1  to  burn  ').  So,  too,  the  short  quantity  of  the  first  syllable  of 
0ww,  Xvo»,  0t>o>,  and  Ttit)  (for  0v«'w,  Xu/w,  </>v/w,  and  riyui)  reminds 
us  that  Homer  is  in  all  these  cases  adopting  the  usage  of  the 
New  Ionic  dialect,  and  is  thus  less  primitive  than  the  Attic 
poets  who  preserve  the  original  length  of  the  syllable  in  ques- 
tion.4 Still  more  instructive  is  the  varying  employment  of 
certain  words,  sometimes  with  a  double  s,  sometimes  with  a 
single  one,  the  choice  of  the  form  being  frequently  determined 
by  metrical  reasons  alone.  Comparative  Philology  teaches 
us  that  in  almost  every  instance  the  form  with  double  s  was 
the  original  one,  the  form  with  single  s  being  the  result  of 
that  phonetic  decay  which  made  Old  Ionic  pass  successively 
into  Middle  and  New  Ionic  A  large  number  of  stems  both 
of  nouns  and  verbs  ended  in  a  sibilant,  which  was  naturally 
doubled  when  a  suffix  which  began  with  another  sibilant  was 
attached  to  them.  From  the  stem  /itXec,  for  example,  we 

of  the  pronoun  rduv).  This  place  is  either  (r)  the  end  of  the  line,  or 
(2)  the  thesis  of  the  first  or  second  foot  (in  the  //.  only  in  disyllabic  stems, 
contrary  to  the  use  of  the  Odyssey,  see  Od.  a.  334,  7  307,  v  126,  T  416, 
IT  210,  <f>  65),  or  (3)  the  fourth  foot  (in  the  arsis  when  preceded  by  a  short 
syllable,  in  the  thesis  when  preceded  by  along  one). 

1  //.  F  150,  E  153,  K  79,  2  434  ;  Od.  &  16,  o  357.   . 

2  //.   H  453  5  Od.  0  483,   X  136,  <J/  283.     Similarly  we  find  tpcp  (Od. 
a  212),  7«\9>  (Od.   a  100),  ?8py  (//.  P  385,  745). 

»  Od.  e  271. 

4  However,  we  find  &TITOS  in  //.  E  484,  though  &TITOS  occurs  in  the 
preceding  book  (N  414).  Similarly  we  meet  with  irpiV  sometimes  with  the 
vowel  long  (as  in  //.  B  348,  E  288,  Z  81,  H  390,  0  474),  sometimes  with 
the  vowel  short  (as  in  //.  A  344,  354,  413,  B  413,  T  132,  A  114,  E  127, 
472,  Z  125,  I  403). 


USE  OF  THE  DIGAMMA.  497 


ought  to  get  ptXeff-ffi  by  adding  the  suffix  of  the  dative  plural, 
and  from  the  stem  TE\£<T  the  verbal  forms  rtXe'er-o-w  and 
fTt\eer-ara  by  adding  the  suffixes  of  the  sigmatic  future  and 
aorist.  In  the  same  way  from  a  stem  like  -rroS  we  should 
have  the  dative  plural  ir6l-<n,  and  then  by  assimilation  TTOO-O-C. 
The  shortened  forms  could  have  come  only  gradually  into 
use  in  the  actual  language  of  the  lonians,  and  their  existence 
in  the  epic  dialect  side  by  side  with  the  fuller  and  older  forms 
reveals  unmistakeably  its  real  nature.  We  may  gain  some  idea 
of  the  relative  antiquity  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  from  the  fact 
that  whereas  there  are  fifty-eight  aorists  with  double  s  as 
against  forty-two  with  single  s  in  the  first  poem,  the  proportion 
in  the  second  poem  is  fifty-four  to  fifty-three. 

The  use  of  the  digamma,  however,  affords  the  clearest 
illustration  of  the  mode  in  which  the  Homeric  dialect  was 
formed.  This  letter,  which  corresponded  in  sound  to  our  ze/, 
tended  to  disappear  at  an  early  date  in  the  Ionic  dialect,  much 
as  w  tends  to  disappear  in  certain  English  dialects,  which  say 
'ooman  for  woman,  or  as  it  has  universally  disappeared  in  the 
pronunciation  of  proper  names  like  Woolwich  and  Harwich. 
The  other  Greek  dialects  retained  it  up  to  a  considerably  later 
date,  though  it  was  eventually  lost  in  all  of  them.  The  Eleian 
inscriptions  found  at  Olympia  show  that  the  digamma  was  there 
in  common  use,  official  documents  from  Boeotia  write  it  in  cer- 
tain words  up  to  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  the  ^Eolic  dialect  of 
Cyprus,  as  revealed  to  us  by  the  decipherment  of  the  so-called 
Cypriote  syllabary,  preserved  it  in  everyday  speech  at  least  as 
late  as  the  fourth  century  before  the  Christian  era. 

We  may  approximately  refer  the  disappearance  ot  the 
digamma  in  Ionia  to  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century 
B.C.  No  example  of  it  happens  to  occur  in  the  inscriptions 
scratched  by  the  Ionic  mercenaries  of  the  Egyptian  king 
Psammetichus  on  the  colossi  at  Abu-Simbel,  B.C.  620  (or,  as 
Bergk,  less  probably,  thinks,  B.C.  590)  —  inscriptions  which  show 
how  widely  spread  a  knowledge  of  writing  must  have  been  at 
the  time  in  Ionia.  A  short  inscription,  however,  assigned  to 
about  B.C.  500,  has  been  discovered  in  Naxos,  on  which  we 
read  the  word  AFYTO  (=avro«/),  though  unfortunately  the 


498  APPENDIX  A. 

genuineness  of  this  inscription  is  disputed.  But  no  doubt 
hangs  over  certain  Chalcidian  inscriptions  of  Magna  Grsecia, 
which  contain  examples  of  the  digamma  ;  and  since  the  Chalci- 
dian colonies  were  sent  out  about  700-660  B.C.,  the  digamma 
could  not  have  been  lost  in  the  Ionic  dialect  until  a  subsequent 
period.  Accordingly  the  Old  Ionic  of  Homer  in  which  the 
digamma  is  preserved  must  have  been  still  spoken  in  Eubcea 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century  B.C. 

But  besides  digammated  words  we  find  in  Homer  a  number 
of  undigammated  ones.  These  fall  into  two  classes.  The  first 
class  consists  of  words  like  olpavos,  GXOC,  o^oe,  which  we  know 
from  the  cognate  languages  once  possessed  a  digamma,  but 
which  show  no  trace  of  it  in  Homer,  that  is,  which  have  lost 
the  sound  in  question  in  the  earliest  form  of  Old  Ionic  with 
which  we  are  acquainted.  The  second  class  contains  words 
which  appear  in  the  poems  sometimes  with,  sometimes  without, 
a  digamma,  the  pronunciation  being  frequently  determined  by 
metrical  reasons  alone.  Of  such  words  there  are  at  least  thirty- 
five.  Examples  of  them  are  given  in  the  foot-note.1 

1  O?«os  always  with  digamma  except  in  //.  n  572  ;  Od.  \JL  135,  v  42, 
|  223,  318,  o  21,  v  70,  303,  ff  419,  co  208  ;  olvos  always  with  digamma 
except  in  //.  B  641,  E  706,  813, 1  224,  K  497,  2  545  ;  Od.  7  40,  46,  51, 
£  77,  \  6l,  o  334,  507,  T  122,  v  260,  <J>  142  ;  oI8a  always  with  digamma 
except  in  //.  2  185,  and  Od.  p  573  ;  tty  always  with  digamma  except  in 
//.  A  137,  *  98  ;  Od.  f  61  ;  'OSucrffetSs  without  digamma  except  in  //. 
A  140  ;  Od.  a  21,  v  126,  £  152,  p  157,  v  239,  <j>  197,  204,  244,  x  45.  328  ; 
olfffiv  without  digamma  (//.  A  89,  B  229,  E  257,  ©400,  K  337,  N  820,  H  308, 
X  425,  "V  663,  858  ;  Od.  y  429,  ir  438,  r  24,  v  154,  x  ioi)  except  in  //. 
"V  441  ;  ovpos  without  digamma  (J7.  A  479,  H  19  ;  Od.  y  176,  8  360,  585, 
e  167,  176,  A.  640,  p  167)  except  in  Od.  8  518 ;  o^xoftai  without  digamma 
except  in  Od.  IT  142  ;  ZirKov  without  digamma  except  in  Od.  &  430,  <p  390; 
dl«ov6s  without  digamma  except  in  //.  Z  76.  So,  again,  TIpos  has  digamma 
in  Od.  a  73,  75,  333,  334,  393,  but  wants  it  in  ff  233  ;  and  fo^»  which 
has  the  digamma  in  four  passages  of  Hesiod  (Scut.  279,  348,  438  ;  Opp. 
582),  wants  it  in  Homer.  Olffrijs  in  //.  B  765  preserves  the  initial  di- 
gamma of  ?TOS  (Sanskrit  vatsas),  which  is  elsewhere  lost,  as  in  the  com- 
pound tirer-fifftos  of  Od.  i\  1 1 8.  Cauer  has  drawn  up  the  following  table 
of  the  cases  in  which  the  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  which  was  the  last 
to  retain  traces  of  its  consonantal  beginning,  (i)  must  be  pronounced  with 
digamma,  (2)  may  or  may  not  be  so  pronounced,  (3)  cannot  be  so  pro- 
nounced : — 


ARGUMENT  FROM  HIATUS.  499 

From  these  examples  it  is  clear  that  three  conclusions  must 
be  drawn  :  (i)  Portions  of  the  Homeric  poems  consisting  of 
certain  phrases  and  formulae  belong  to  the  Old  Ionic  dialect  in 
which  the  sound  of  the  digamma  was  still  heard.  (2)  Other 
portions  belong  to  a  later  stage  of  the  dialect,  when  the  di- 
gamma had  ceased  to  be  pronounced,  and  even  such  traces  of 
it  as  a  hiatus  or  a  lengthened  vowel  had  passed  away.  (3)  A 
time  arrived  when  the  existence  of  the  digamma  had  so  far 
faded  from  the  memory  of  the  rhapsodists  that  they  came  to 
regard  the  hiatus  representing  the  lost  digamma  in  certain  tra- 
ditional verses  and  expressions  as  due  to  '  metrical  necessity,' 
and  consequently  to  be  admitted  or  excluded  according  to  the 
requirements  of  the  verse. 

The  last  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  occurrence  of  the 
hiatus  in  the  case  of  words  in  which  no  consonant  had  ever  been 
lost.  Thus,  as  has  already  been  noticed,  we  find  kdaaro  from  cl/uf, 
the  Latin  ire,  a  form  which  owes  its  origin  to  the  mistaken 
analogy  of  words  like  'itnrov  (for  ffiftirov,  root  fer).  Another 
instance  will  be  vtoapdi'is  in  II.  $  346,  where  the  second  part 
of  the  compound  represents  the  Sanskrit  drdras,  '  wet,'  unless 
we  adopt  the  variant  reading  r«oa\f'.  In  fact,  the  use  of  the 
digamma  shows  that  a  large  part  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  is 
composed  in  quite  as  artificial  a  language  as  the  epics  of 
Apollonius  Rhodius  or  Quintus  Smyrnseus.  The  digamma  is 
frequently  observed  in  appearance  only,  a  hiatus  being  allowed 
*by  the  poets,  not  because  they  remembered  that  it  took  the 
place  of  an  original  consonant,  but  because  they  found  what 
seemed  to  them  a  hiatus  in  the  poetical  '  tags  '  and  formulae 
which  had  been  handed  down  to  them.  In  this  way  alone  can 
we  explain  the  disproportionate  preponderance  of  the  hiatus 
in  a  few  words  like  6'c,  ol,  and  m?a — the  very  words  which  also 
show  a  hiatus  in  other  epic  and  elegiac  poetry — or  the  fact 

Digamma  necessary        Not  necessary  Neglected 

tlo,  fo,  e§          .         14  times         .         7  times         .         i  time 

€061'  .  7         „  II         „  .  — 

oT    .         .         .      643      ,,        over  180     „  .       23  times 

I      ...        64      „  15     ,,  .1  time 

8s  45  176  31 


500  APPENDIX  A. 

pointed  out  by  Hoffmann,  that  although  in  the  Iliad  a  short 
final  syllable  remains  short  before  ol,  the  latter  word  never 
causes  the  elision  of  a  preceding  vowel  or  the  shortening  of  a 
preceding  long  syllable.1 

If  we  enquire  into  the  use  of  the  digamma  in  Hesiod,  the 
Homeric  Hymns,  the  fragments  of  the  Cyclic  poets,  and  in 
Empedocles,  Tyrtaeus,  and  the  Elegiac  and  Iambic  writers 
generally,  we  shall  find  some  reason  for  the  old  Greek  tra- 
dition which  assigned  all  epic  heroic  literature,  along  with 
the  Hymns,  the  Margttes,  and  the  Batrachomyomachia,  to  the 
author  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  In  the  earliest  of  these 
productions  remains  of  the  Old  Ionic  dialect  are  embedded 
much  as  in  the  Homeric  poems,  while  in  the  rest  the  hia- 
tus that  distinguishes  originally  digammated  words  is  due  to 
the  mere  repetition  or  imitation  of  ancient  epic  formulae.  Thus 
in  the  Theogony  the  proportion  of  cases  in  which  the  digamma 
is  observed  to  those  in  which  it  is  not  is  as  3  or  4  to  i,a  larger 
proportion  than  that  presented  by  the  Odyssey  ;  in  the  Works 
and  Days  the  proportion  is  as  3  to  i,  as  also  in  the  Hymn  to 
Aphrodite  ;  whereas  in  the  Hymn  to  Demeter  the  proportion  is 
exactly  equal,  in  the  Hymn  to  Hermes  as  i  to  i^,  and  in  the 
cyclic  fragments  (excluding  the  Kypria)  and  the  Batrachomyo- 
machia  as  i  to  6.  On  the  other  hand,  the  proportion  in  Em- 
pedocles is  as  i  to  3,  though  how  little  Empedocles  was 
acquainted  with  the  true  origin  of  the  epic  hiatus  is  shown  by 
his  incorrect  introduction  of  it  in  such  analogic  coinages  as 
ft'fyifveu  (root  ad)  and  aaairtroc.  The  Elegiac  and  Iambic 
poets  preserve  the  digamma,  or  rather  the  hiatus  which  had 
taken  its  place,  in  a  good  number  of  the  words  in  which  it 
occurs  in  Homer,  and  Theognis  has  it  even  in  tor,  '  a  violet,' 
and  i£toe,  where  it  has  been  lost  in  the  language  of  our  Iliad 
and  Odyssey.  In  his  use  of  these  two  words,  however,  The- 
ognis was  probably  imitating  some  portion  of  the  old  epic 
literature. 

But  the  digamma  is  not  the  only  lost  letter  of  which  traces 
survive  here  and  there  in  Homer.     Another  sound  which  dis- 
appeared at  a  yet  earlier  time  than  the  digamma  was  the  yod 
1  Hoffmann,  Quastiones  Homericce,  p.  56. 


TRACES  OF   YOD  AND  SIGMA.  501 

or  y.  The  conservative  dialect  of  Cyprus  was  the  only  one  in 
Greece  which  preserved  the  yod  into  the  days  of  writing ;  here 
it  regularly  occurs  along  with  the  digamma  in  inscriptions 
written  in  the  characters  of  the  Cypriote  syllabary  as  late  as  the 
fourth  century  B.C.  It  is  commonly  supposed  that  og,  we,  and 
on  primitively  began  with  this  letter,  and  answered  to  the 
Sanscrit  yas  and  yavat ;  in  this  case  the  yod  would  have  to  be 
restored  to  these  words  in  such  phrases  as  0eoe  &g,  where  the 
lengthening  of  the  final  syllable  of  the  first  word  implies  an 
initial  consonant  in  the  second.1  The  Locrian  inscriptions  of 
the  fifth  century  B.C.,  however,  write  fort  with  digamma  and 
not  yod;  and  it  is  therefore  better  to  connect  og  and  its  deriva- 
tives with  the  Latin  qui,  quis,  and  Sanskrit  chit,  and  to  regard 
its  lost  letter  as  a  digamma.  A  more  certain  instance  of  the 
presence  of  the  yod  is  uadat  (from  the  root  yd),  which  has  a 
consonantal  beginning  in  twenty-two  passages. 

A  tendency  to  drop  a  sigma  seems  to  have  set  in  at  an  even 
earlier  period  than  a  tendency  to  drop  the  yod.  Words  like 
<0jowe  (English  sweat),  which  originally  began  with  two  conso- 
nants (sw),  must  have  lost  the  first  at  quite  a  remote  date  ; 
indeed,  in  this  particular  word  and  its  derivatives  even  the 
digamma  is  only  once  preserved  (in  II.  A  27).  Sometimes, 
however,  the  digamma  became  (f>,  as  has  happened  in  the  case 
of  the  reflexive  pronoun  vtye,  though  even  this  change  did  not 
always  preserve  the  sibilant.2  When  the  second  consonant 
was  X,  p,  or  v,  the  initial  sibilant  was  generally  retained  in 
^olic  (as  ff/MKpas)  and  probably  also  in  the  Old  Ionic  of  Homer, 
or  else  was  assimilated  to  the  sound  that  followed.  Thus  we 
have  a-XX?yj,Toe  for  a-a-X^-rot;  (our  slack),  or  4>(Xo-/i/mci>}£  for 
0tXo-<7/u£t<5»7<;  from  the  root  smi,  '  to  smile.'  Wherever  such 
compounds  occur  in  the  poems,  or  wherever  the  lengthening 
of  a  short  syllable  indicates  the  preservation  of  the  sibilant  at 
the  commencement  of  the  following  word,  we  may  be  sure  that 
we  are  in  the  presence  of  an  old  formation.  It  is  quite  other- 

1  When  the  final  syllable  remains  short,   as  in  &6fs  &s  (OJ.  x  299) 
we  may  feel  sure  that  we  are  dealing  with  the  product  of  a  later  age. 

2  Bugge.  for  instance,  has  argued  that  (f>i-\6s  has  the  same  root  as  <r<pe, 
and  originally  meant  *  one's  own.' 


502 


APPENDIX  A. 


wise,  however,  when  the  word  before  which  the  short  syllable 
is  lengthened  or  a  letter  doubled  can  be  proved  by  comparison 
with  the  allied  languages  to  have  never  possessed  more  than 
one  initial  consonant.  When,  for  example,  we  find  such  com- 
pounds as  tViX/y^y,  'grazing,'1  tVirc'XXw,2  or  such  expressions 
as  aiOwva  /J,£yd0v/j.oi',3  A'iavra  /ueyaX^ropo,4  Kara,  yuo/par,8  we 
are  transported  to  a  wholly  new  era,  an  era  when  the  poets  had 
forgotten  the  real  origin  of  the  doubled  letter  and  the  length- 
ened syllable,  and  imagined  that  they  too  might  double  a 
letter  or  lengthen  a  syllable  at  will  should  the  metre  so  require. 
Such  cases  of  false  analogy  belong  to  an  artificial  dialect  which 
is  separated  by  many  generations  from  the  Old  Ionic  of  the 
earliest  parts  of  Homer.  The  origin,  for  instance,  of  eXXa/Sc 
(root  labti)  and  EppaQn  (root  mant/i)  is  the  same  as  that  of 
tXXtTre  in  Apollonius  Rhodius — the  misleading  analogy  of  mis- 
understood archaisms. 

We  must  here  turn  aside  for  a  moment  to  point  out  the 
cases  in  which  the  hiatus  or  the  lengthening  of  a  naturally  short 
syllable  may  be  assumed  to  imply  a  lost  consonant.  It  is  well 
known  that  other  causes  may  be  called  in  to  account  for  both. 
Sometimes  such  violations  of  Greek  metrical  usage  are  due  to 
the  caesura,  sometimes  to  the  misconceptions  of  the  later  poets. 
A  careful  examination  of  Homeric  literature,  however,  would 
seem  to  show  that  licenses  of  this  kind  were  not  originally 
permissible,  and  only  crept  in  through  the  progress  of  phonetic 
decay  in  the  Ionic  dialect  which  occasioned  the  shortening  of 
syllables  and  the  loss  of  letters,  and  the  consequent  belief  that 
the  earlier  poets  had  allowed  themselves  licenses  '  for  the  sake 
of  the  metre.'  Thus  the  final  a  of  neuters  plural  and  the  final 
-ai  of  datives  plural  were  once  long,  and  Hartel  has  shown  that 
passages  exist  in  Homer  in  which  the  primitive  quantity  of 
these  terminations  is  preserved.  So,  again,  the  frequent  hiatus 
after  the  particle  rj  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  word  was 
originally  itfe,  and  consequently  the  apparent  hiatus  is  no  hia- 
tus at  all  except  in  the  verses  of  later  imitators.  Elsewhere 
the  hiatus  is  found  after  -t  and  -u,  the  explanation  being  that  the 

1  //.  P  599.  *  Od.  VT  361.  3  //.  n  488. 

4  //.  P  626.  5  n.  n  367. 


STAGES  OF  IONIC  GREEK.  503 

semi-vowels  y  and  v  were  sounded  after  these  letters  in  Old 
Ionic  when  another  vowel  followed,  so  that  formations  like 
dfji<p-ov^ie l  or  a^-jjKJje 2  must  be  assigned  to  the  New  Ionic 
period.  Similarly,  we  find  prepositions  which,  like  EK  and  eV, 
begin  with  a  vowel  admitting  the  hiatus  because  of  the  geni- 
tives and  datives  in  -ov  and  -«  or  -t  with  which  they  were  used 
(e.g.  £i/7r\£KT«  eVt  litypu).  Wherever  another  vowel  precedes, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  we  have  to  do  with  the  product 
of  false  analogy  and  of  a  later  age.  In  other  cases  the  hiatus 
is  explained  by  its  coming  after  stems  which  originally  ended 
with  a  consonant,  such  as  ftof  or  ravaf.  Its  occurrence  after 
Ti-joo  (as  in  Trpoepiaffb)  or  TTpotaXXw)  may  be  accounted  for  by 
the  original  form  of  the  preposition  irpwft.  The  contracted 
forms  Trpot/rvipai',3  Trpov6r)Mi>,4  and  irpoi/xuv  5  betray  their  more 
recent  date.  Apart  from  certain  composite  or  polysyllabic  words, 
all  other  examples  of  the  hiatus  or  the  lengthening  of  a  short 
syllable  in  the  older  parts  of  Homer  must  be  taken  to  indicate 
a  lost  consonant. 

If  we  assign  the  transition  of  Old  Ionic  into  Middle  Ionic 
to  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  we  shall  not  be 
far  from  the  truth.  New  Ionic  may  be  said  to  commence  with 
the  inscriptions  of  Abu-Simbel,  referred  to  above,  and  to  con- 
tinue to  the  age  of  Hippocrates,  when  it  becomes  considerably 
tainted  by  Atticisms.  It  is  best  illustrated  by  the  dialect  of 
Herodotus  and  contemporaneous  inscriptions,  a  dialect,  be  it 
observed,  which  is  substantially  identical  with  that  of  the  New 
Ionic  portions  of  Homer.  The  proof  of  this  it  would  take 
too  long  to  give  here,  but  the  fact  can  easily  be  tested  by  com- 
paring a  dictionary  of  HerodotUo  with  a  dictionary  of  Homer.6 

1   Od.  p  237.  2  //.  K  256  ;   Od.  if  80.  3  //.  O  306. 

4  //.  ft  409.  5  //.  X  97  ;   Od.  f  138. 

6  Thus  Herodotus  and  Homer  have  Tt0€?<n,  lelffi,  StSown,  p-nyvvin 
instead  of  the  Attic  nQfcuri,  &c.  ;  Herodotus  and  Homer  alone  have  the 
later  d(j.fv  for  fff/Jiev ;  Herodotus  usually  omits  the  temporal  augment, 
especially  before  double  consonants  (e.g.  appiatieov,  epSov,  aira\\dffffovTo) 
and  diphthongs  (e.g.  efccafe,  a'/pee),  and  drops  it  in  XPV"  and  the  iterative 
and  pluperfect ;  and  Homer  uses  the  New  Ionic  (Is  of  Herodotus  as  well 
as  the  old  Ionic  efffft.  The  analogic  SiSwa"o/j.tv  (Od.  v  358,  to  314)  re- 
minds us  of  \oyu^o/uat  in  Herodotus,  and  the  latter's  /ie/itn/xeVoj  can  be 


504  APPENDIX  A. 

In  two  or  three  respects,  indeed,  the  forms  of  Herodotus  are 
more  archaic  than  those  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Thus 
the  MSS.  of  Herodotus  still  offer  lavdare  (for  cfai'Save),1 
whereas  we  have  the  lonicised  form  r^r&ti'E  in  II.  £1  25,  and 
Od.  y  143,  and  the  later  contracted  from  ijvSai'e  in  II.  A  24, 
378,  S  510,  &c.2  The  Attic  contraction  of  deipw,  again,  which 
occurs  in  II.  N  63,  is  not  found  in  Herodotus,  and  while 
Herodotus  has  the  more  original  Kopiaw,  Homer  has  the  later 
(Atticising)  Kopeei  and  Kopeeig.3 

What  is  much  more  remarkable,  however,  is  that  the  MSS. 
of  Homer  contain  numerous  examples  of  two  forms  which  do 
not  appear  in  New  Ionic  inscriptions  before  the  beginning  of 
the  fourth  century  B.C.,  and  are  probably  due  to  Attic  influence. 
These  forms  are  those  of  the  genitives  in  -ew  and  -tvc ,  instead  of 
the  older  -to  and  -toe.  Thus  we  have  ip-tv,  ytvtvr,  Sf'pevc. 

No  doubt  it  is  possible  that  the  diphthong  in  question  is  a 
scribe's  error,  introduced  where  the  double  syllable  fo  was  pro- 
nounced by  '  synizesis '  as  one.  But  this  does  not  alter  the 
really  important  fact  of  the  case.  Whether  we  call  it  synizesis 
or  anything  else,  eo  is  in  very  many  instances  pronounced  as  a 
single  syllable  in  the  Homeric  poems,  that  is,  has  become  a 
diphthong.  It  is  quite  immatarial  whether  this  diphthong  was 

paralleled  in  Homer  by  similar  products  of  faLe  analogy.  The  hysterogen 
ffTalriffav  for  <rrcufv  occurs  in  the  Iliad  (P  733)  as  well  as  in  Herodotus 
and  Thucydides  ;  the  plural  terminations  -olaro,  -•fjaro,  and  -e'aro,  which 
alone  are  found  in  Homer,  are  Herodotean,  as  is  also  fcoOa  (II.  0  408), 
instead  of  the  older  efuOa  ;  and  Homer  and  Herodotus  alike  have  the 
forms  tfia,  tfif,  tfiffav  (II.  A  47,  H  213,  K  197,  N  305).  Homer  also  offers 
us  the  Herodotean  <pv\aicos  (II.  Z  35,  I  85,  K  56,  fl  566  ;  Od.  o  231),  and 
ndprvpoi  (II.  A  338,  B  302,  F  280,  E  274,  X  255  ;  Od.  a.  273,  {  394).  Other 
New  lonicisms  will  be  iffri-fi  for  ea-rta,  Udpios  (II.  T  325)  by  the  side  of 
n<£pi8os,  and  the  lost  aspirate  in  /j.frd\/j.fvos  (II.  E  336),  e-irdtycvos  (II. 
H  260),  firlffTiov  (Od.  £  265),  and  aitrdSiov  (Od.  6  449).  About  ninety 
iteratives  in  -trtcov  are  met  with  in  Homer,  as  against  only  ten  in  Hesiod. 
Pindar  has  three,  and  the  Attic  tragedians  four,  which  are  T  '  linly  adopted 
from  Homer,  and  none  are  found  in  Attic  prose.  Many,  however,  occur 
in  Herodotus,  though  it  must  be  added  that  all  the  Homeric  iteratives 
belong  to  the  sigmatic  aorist  (like  f\d<rcuric(). 

1  Herod,  ix.  5,  19.  2  Similarly  tirrfivSavf  (Od.  v  16,  &c.)« 

•  //.  0  379,  N  831. 


ABSENCE  OF  DORIC  FROM  HOMER.  505 

sounded  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  ev  or  not.  The  inscrip- 
tions show  that  before  the  fourth  century  B.C.  eo  had  not  become 
a  diphthong  in  New  Ionic,  and  that  when  it  did  become  a 
diphthong  it  was  represented  as  «u.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that 
an  artificial  dialect  like  the  Epic,  which  aimed  at  being  archaic, 
would  have  anticipated  the  innovating  pronunciation  of  the 
spoken  language. 

But  there  are  some  other  philological  peculiarities  in  the 
language  of  Homer  which  seem  to  imply  that  the  poems  were 
revised  and  additions  made  to  them  here  and  there  as  late  even 
as  the  New  Attic  period.  Thus  we  find  words  known  to  us 
by  Alexandrine  use  like  /GAwfr/ow,1  any(ii\-?  <rkci£w,  gpoaivu9 
and  orvyeTi',4  «;'xpatff//o»>  and  TTcii^aovrw,5  which  are  common  to 
Homer  and  Apollonius  Rhodius,  and  epvKavau),  which  elsewhere 
occurs  only  in  Quintus  Smyrnaeus.  From  the  post- Homeric 
we  get  the  verbal  ave-njwt,  and  the  weak  passive  future 
6  has  been  formed  after  the  false  analogy  of  forms 
like  firiffofjiat.. 

We  must  now  pass  on  to  the  second  point  we  have  to 
prove,  the  existence  of  other  dialects  than  Ionic  in  the  language 
of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  These  dialects  are  the  ^Eolic  and 
the  Attic.  Of  the  Doric  dialect  there  is  no  trace.  The  forms 
which  have  been  quoted  as  Doric  are  really  archaisms  which 
belonged  to  Old  Ionic  and  were  preserved  among  the  conserva- 
tive Dorians  after  their  disappearance  among  the  lonians.  In 
f  o-ffeircu,  for  instance,  we  have  the  old  formative  of  the  future  ya 
which  existed  in  Sanskrit  as  well  as  in  ancient  Greek  ;  the  dative 
Ttiv  for  T-£</>((I')  is  an  archaic  form  which  belonged  to  Old  Ionic 
as  much  as  to  Doric  ;  and  infinitives  like  xo^ff£P£l'  are  equally 
survivals  from  an  early  period  of  the  Ionic  dialect  itself.  The 
pronoun  rvvri,  which  occurs  six  times  in  the  poems,  similarly 
preserves  the  nasal  which  makes  its  appearance  in  the 
yEolic  TOVV  and  the  Sanskrit  twam,  and  has  been  counted  as 
Doric  only  because  that  most  conservative  of  the  Greek  dialects 
preserved  a  word  which  in  later  times  elsewhere  disappeared. 

1  Od.  ir  466,  r  25,  </>  239,  385.       *  n.  n  258.       s  n.  z  507,  o  264. 

4  Od.  K  113.  5  //.  B  181,  450.  «  //.  K  365. 

VOL.   I. 22 


5o6  APPENDIX  A. 

The  Ionic  poets  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  de- 
tested Dorian  race  which  drove  their  forefathers  from  their  old 
homes  in  Greece,  and  the  only  passage  in  which  Dorians 
are  named  is  Od.  r  177,  where  a  list  is  given  of  the  various 
tribes  inhabiting  Krete.  The  elegiac  poets  whose  dialect  was 
based  on  that  of  epic  literature  show  the  same  aversion  to 
anything  Dorian.  It  is  only  his  Embateria  that  Tyrtaeus 
composes  in  Doric,  and  even  Theognis  but  once  uses  the  pre- 
position TTor/,  which  is  found  eighty-nine  times  in  Homer  and, 
though  originally  common  to  all  the  Greek  dialects,  had  come 
to  be  preserved  in  Doric  alone.1 

The  avoidance  of  the  Doric  dialect  on  the  part  of  Homer 
is  brought  out  into  greater  relief  by  the  usage  of  the  Hesi- 
odic  poems  in  which  we  find  such  decided  Dorisms  as  the 
shortened  final  syllable  of  TrpoTrac,2  two  genitives  in  dv  instead 
of  the  Ionic  -wr,3  the  pronoun  tv  for  ol,4  and  the  Doric  %v  for 
3\aa.v.b  Ahrens  believes  that  the  Dorisms  of  Hesiod  are  speci- 
fically Delphian ;  however  that  may  be,  the  contrast  between 
the  two  classes  of  epic  poetry,  the  heroic  and  the  didactic,  in 
this  respect  confirms  in  a  striking  way  the  Asiatic  origin  of 
Homer.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  dialect  which  had 
grown  up  on  the  soil  of  either  the  Peloponnesus  or  Northern 
Greece  could  have  remained  so  thoroughly  untainted  by  Doric 
forms  and  words. 

It  is  quite  different  when  we  turn  to  the  remains  of  the  ^olic 
dialect  which  have  been  detected  in  the  poems.  ^Eolisms  are  em- 
bedded in  Homer  like  flies  in  amber ;  they  are  scattered  up  and 
down  both  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  though  almost  always  in 
fixed  places  in  the  verse.  Thus  we  find  Zadeoc  with  the  /Eolic 
£a  for  &a  as  an  epithet  of  the  ^Eolic  towns  Killa,6  Nisa,7  Krisa,8 
and  Pherse,9  the  Ionic  form  of  which  was  Therae,  but  always  at 
the  beginning  of  the  thesis  of  the  second  foot ;  once,  and  once 

1  Tlp6s  is  found  two  hundred  times  in  Homer,  and  the  older  irport  sixty 
times.     The  word  has  no  connection,  except  in  meaning,  with  trori  and  the 
contracted  vos. 

2  So,  too,  Koiipds  (Th.  40),  S^o-os  (Th.  521).  8  Opp.  144,  Th.  41. 
4  Frag.  134.                   »  Th.  321,  825.                    «  //.  A  38,  452. 

7  //.  B  508.  »  //.  B  520.     '  »  //.  I  151,  293. 


&OLISMS  IN  HOMER.  5°7 

only,1  do  we  meet  the  word  in  a  different  formula  and  in  a  diffe- 
rent place,  the  end  of  the  line.  Here,  however,  it  is  an  epithet 
of  the  Doric  Kythera,  and  belongs  plainly  to  an  imitator  of  a 
later  age  who  found  the  old  stock  epithet  convenient  for  ter- 
minating his  verse.  Other  ^Eolic  epithets  of  the  same  kind 
are  £afe,2  Carpe^e,3  and  £axpjjr)c.*  Indeed,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  it  is  especially  in  the  case  of  epithets  that 
remains  of  the  ^Eolic  dialect  have  been  handed  down.  'A/iv/xwv, 
for  instance,  where  the  y£olic  v  takes  the  place  of  the  Ionic  w, 
has  become  so  trite  and  meaningless  an  epithet  as  to  be  applied 
to  ^Egisthus.5  TaXavpivoe  and  Ka\avpo\j/,  again,  are  ^Eolisms, 
as  also  ayauoe,  as  well  as  the  numerous  compounds  of  which 
ipt-,  instead  of  the  Ionic  apt-,  forms  the  first  part.  Since  the 
use  of  e  in  place  of  a  before  p  characterised  yEolic,  the  form  of 
the  name  Qepairr)^  is  an  evident  proof  that  Thersites  belonged 
to  the  older  portions  of  the  Homeric  poems,  and  figured  in  the 
legends  that  circulated  in  ^Eolis.  The  same  may  also  be  said 
of  Halitherses,6  Thersilokhus,7  and  Polytherseides.8  If  Hero- 
dian  is  right,  the  varying  declension  of  the  name  Sarpedon  as 
SapTTifSorroe  and  SapTrr/Soi'oe  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  first  is 
an  ^Eolism  ;  but  this  statement  is  extremely  doubtful,  since  the 
vocalisation  of  the  word  is  Ionic,  and  the  hero  himself  was  a 
Lycian,  and  belongs  therefore  to  Ionic  and  not  ^Eolic  legend, 
while  the  preservation  of  the  initial  sibilant  merely  shows  that 
the  name  has  come  down  unchanged  in  its  Old  Ionic  dress.8 
Similarly  it  is  probable  that  the  form  ^iKpoQ  is  old  Ionic  and 


1  //.  o  432.  2  Od.  e  367,  fj.  313. 

8  //.  H  223  ;  Od.  |  19,  5  451.  *  II.  E  525,  M  347,  360. 

*  Od.  a  29.  *  Od.  )8  157,  253,  p  68,  «  451. 

7  //.  P  2  1  6,  *  209.  *  Od.  x  287. 

9  The  root  is  that  of  fpitew,  serpere,  Sanskrit  sarp.    In  bringing  him 
from  Lycia  the  legends  made  the  usual  confusion  between  the  terrestrial 
Lycia  and  the  celestial  Lycia  ('  the  land  of  light,'  Latin  hex),  though  no 
doubt  the  struggles  between  the  Ionic  emigrants  to  Asia  Minor  and  the 
Lycian  natives  occasioned  the  localisation  of  the  myth  in  that  particular 
spot.     It  is  possible,  however,  that  the  name  Lycia  was  of  Greek  origin. 
given  to  a  mountainous  country  where  the  inhabitants  of  the  coast  saw  the 
sun  rise  in  the  morning,  since  the  Lycians  called  themselves  Termilae 
(Tramele  in  the  native  inscriptions). 


5o8  APPENDIX  A. 


not  ^Eolic,  which,  as  in  Spvpya,  kept  the  original  s  before 
m,  although  tryuuytpdc,  <rjuvyfpwe  are  certainly  ^Eolisms.  Soli- 
tary ^olisms  have  been  preserved  by  the  metre  in  Tr/o-vpee,1 
KeK\r)yovTfg,z  and  the  vocative  vvp^a,3  and  in  <prjp.4  To  the 
metre,  again,  we  must  ascribe  the  preservation  of  the  .^Eolic 
forms  of  the  personal  pronouns.5  Other  ^Eolisms,  no  doubt, 
once  existed  here  and  there  in  the  text  of  which  no  trace 
now  remains,  since  in  two  passages,  ^Xn^trcu  for  the  received 
0Ati//£rcu,6  and  TropdaXts  for  the  Aristarchean  irapZaXic,7  were 
read  by  Zenodotus  and  the  Venetian  Codex.  A  fortunate 
chance  has  preserved  for  us  the  specifically  ^Eolic  title  ot<n>;u- 
vr\TT]Q  in  Od.  0  258.  Several  other  .^Eolisms  may  further  be 
detected  in  the  poems  ;  8  among  these  «i',  by  the  side  of  the 
Ionic  at;  is  the  most  noticeable.  In  the  Iliad  KEV  occurs  121 
times  before  vowels,  78  times  before  consonants  ;  <ce  occurs 
145  times,  K  76  times,  %'  4  times,  tlcroKev  7  times,  tio-dce  18 
times,  slcroK  3  times,  we  KCV  and  &g  Kt  1  1  times.  On  the  other 
hand,  ay  is  found  137  times,  and  the  compound  &v  KEV  once.9 
Such  a  compound  could  only  have  been  formed  when  all  sense 
of  the  original  meaning  of  *.-£»  had  passed  away.  Perhaps,  how- 
ever, the  best-known  holism  is  the  nominative  of  masculine 
nouns  of  the  first  declension,  like  rE<j>e\T)ytpera.  We  find  it 
almost  always  in  certain  stock  phrases  and  set  positions.  In 
a  l°  the  form  has  been  half  Ionised  after  the  model  of 
riQ,  which  thrice  occurs  u  in  imitation  of  the  older  usage. 


1  //.  O  680  ;  Od.  e  70.  «  Od.  /t  256,  {  30. 

s  //.  T  130  ;  Od.  8  743.  «  //.  A  268,  B  743. 

s  Namely,  &nnfs  (II.  *  432  ;  Od.  t  303,  321,  x  55)  ;  *W"(")  twenty- 
one  times  ;  %te  (//.  A  59,  H  292,  378,  397,  K  346,  E  62,  2  268,  X  219, 
ft  355  ;  Od.  i  404,  /c  209,  n  221,  x  73)  ;  %»«  (^-  A  274,  335,  H  481, 
¥469,  n  242;  Od.  if>  231)  ;  fyiu(v)  seventeen  times;  iwte  (//.  "V  412  ; 
Od"  v  357.  o"407»  »  109). 

8    Od.  p  221.  •>  H.  N  103,  P  20,  *  573. 

8  'AA/ci  (Od.  £  130),  &\\v$is  (Od.  e  71,  369),  &nv5is,  faaiOa  (five  times 
in  the  Iliad  alone),  evcuro-vrepoi  (always  after  the  first  trochee,  //.  A  387  ; 
Od.  it  366,  &c.),  axfvuv,  airovpds,   Setu  (by  the  side  of  the  Ionic   Sew), 
i>/iEireu  (instead  of  the  Ionic  elfuvcu,  forty  times  in  /?.,  twenty-one  times 
in  Od.),  tyfrfjyopOat,  ^Klxv^v. 

9  II.  N  127.  'o  //.  £  197.  "  //.  T  179,  P  588  ;   Od.  $  19. 


ATTICISMS  IN  HOMER.  509 

This  has  also  been  the  case  in  fiirvra  for  cbr^-a.1  The  later 
Ionic  poets,  forgetting  the  origin  of  the  form,  identified  its 
termination  with  that  of  the  accusative  in  -a,  and  hence  we  find 
(vpvoira  used  as  an  accusative  in  II.  A  498,  9  206,  S  265,  O 
152,  O  98,  331.  The  grammarians  of  Alexandria  carried  the 
misconception  still  further,  and  Priscian  and  the  Scholiasts  lay 
down  that  such  words  are  indeclinable  and  may  be  used  in 
any  case  whatever. 

The  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  these  facts  are  irresistible. 
^Eolic  lays  form  the  background  of  those  Ionic  poems  which 
we  call  Homer.  It  was  among  the  cities  of  ^Eolis,  in  that  very 
Trojan  land  in  which  the  scene  of  the  Iliad  is  laid,  that  the  Greek 
Epic  first  grew  up.  From  the  hands  of  ^Eolic  bards  it  passed 
into  those  of  their  Ionic  neighbours,  but  carrying  with  it 
memorials  and  evidences  of  its  origin.  Epithets  and  phrases 
that  had  become  part  of  the  rhapsodist's  stock-in-trade  were 
intenvoven  into  the  Ionic  versions  of  the  old  lays  ;  the  proper 
names  and  the  legends  attached  to  them  were  handed  on  to 
the  new  schools  of  Homeridas ;  and  here  and  there  an  ^Eolic 
word  or  form  was  retained  where  it  suited  the  metre  better 
than  its  Ionic  equivalent.  Philology  thus  confirms  the  tra- 
dition which  made  Smyrna  the  birthplace  of  Homer  and  the 
earliest  seat  of  Homeric  poetry,  and  is  confirmed  in  its  turn  by 
the  subject-matter  of  the  Iliad  which  localises  the  '  tale  divine  ' 
of  ancient  Aryan  mythology  in  the  Troad.  It  was  there  that 
the  ^Eolic  fugitives  from  the  Dorians  had  to  wrest  a  new  home 
for  themselves  from  the  hands  of  its  Asiatic  possessors. 

But  ^Eolisms  are  not  the  only  alien  elements  that  we  find 
in  Homer.  There  is  an  Attic  colouring  in  the  poems  as  we'll. 
So  strong,  indeed,  is  the  latter  that  Aristarchus  held  Homef 
to  have  been  an  Athenian,  and  Cobet  considers  the  poems  to 
have  been  partially  Atticised. 

We  must,  of  course,  be  on  our  guard  against  assuming  too 
hastily  that  a  form  is  Attic  because  it  occurs  in  Attic  writers 
and  not  in  the  Ionic  of  Herodotus.  Attic  is  an  offshoot 
of  the  Ionic  dialect ;  Old  Attic  may  be  regarded  as  a 
sister  of  Old  Ionic  ;  and  it  would  only  be  natural  to  find 
>  11.  H  384. 


5io  APPENDIX  A. 

many  archaic  forms  in  New  Attic  which  have  been  lost  even  in 
Old  Ionic.  It  does  not  follow  that  they  did  not  exist  in  Old 
Ionic.  The  form  ctvtwyc,  for  example,  is  not  an  Atticism, 
but  an  Old  lonicism.  Only  those  forms  and  words  must  be  ac- 
counted Atticisms  which  can  be  shown  by  Comparative  Philo- 
logy to  have  grown  up  subsequently  to  the  separation  of  the 
Attic  from  the  remaining  Ionic  dialects.  Forms  originating  in 
phonetic  decay  or  false  analogy  which  are  not  found  in  New 
Ionic  are  Attic  peculiarities,  the  growth  and  creation  of  Attic 
soil  ;  but  no  others.  Genuine  Atticisms,  however,  exist  in 
abundance  in  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Thus  we  have  the 
accusatives  Ti/Si/,1  Mijwori;,2  'O(W?j,3  like  lepfj  in  Euripides  ;  4 
6ta  used  sixty  times  in  place  of  the  older  foo'e  ;  vw  occurring 
twice,  <7^>w  once,  o^>wc  once,5  and  fftyltrt  fifty-five  times  ;  con- 
tracted futures  like  KTCVC'I,  rtXtt  and  KO^IM,  oyX 
heterogen  aorists  like  tirtaov  ;  and  optatives  like 
with  o  instead  of  «,7  and  the  termination  dropped  in  the  third 
person  singular  (v-n-fpir^oi  for  virepaxoir)^]).9  Were  we  to  listen  to 
Professor  Paley,  the  list  of  Atticisms  might  not  only  be  largely 
extended,  but  also  be  referred  to  the  language  of  the  Periklean 
age.  Among  the  Atticisms  he  quotes  we  find  such  phrases  as 
ore  fifv  —  ore  £e  ;  o't  ayu^t  Upta/zor,9  7ra[tafia\\£(r8ai  ^/w^»/,10 
Trou'iffOai  TratSa  in  the  sense  of  'adopting,'11  eVt  Iwpwv,  'while 
gifts  last,'12  like  ^a'xfC  £7rt',13  irepiSoadai  riroc,  'to  wager,'14 
(kiTrvttr  e»'  wpjj,  '  to  take  an  early  dinner,'  15  (KEIVOI,  in  the  sense 
of  'the  enemy,'16  pj  w^eXXe  ytre06ai,*?i  awYoc,18  a  phrase  which 


1  n.  A  384.  2  //.  o  339.  »  Od.  T  136. 

4  Alk.  2$.     Compare  Aristoph.  Acharn.  1151.  s  Od.  862. 

«  //.  O  65,  T  104  ;  A  161,  Od.  ^  20  ;  77.  B  389,  T  140,  K  331,  A  232, 
I  132,  274,  *  373,  Od.  (i  230,  v  229  ;  //.  K  331,  A  454,  S  133  ;  Od.  o  546, 
X  256.  The  contracted  futures  in  -tu,  -lovfuu,  however,  occur  eleven  times 
in  Herodotus. 

7  See  //.  I  284,  142,  H  241  ;  Od.  \  838.     Herodotus,  however,  has 
tveol  (vii.  6). 

8  Od.  {  184  ;  //.  H  107  ;  Od.  0  317. 

9  //.  T  146.  10  //.  I  322.  »  //.  I  495. 

»  U.  I  602.  "  //.  P  368.  >«  11  *  485  ;  Od.  <f>  78. 

•*  //.  P  176.  "  //.  S  1  88.  »  //.  P  686. 

i"  //.Z39;  0</.r,55,326,  &c. 


SUPPOSED  NEW- ATTIC  FORMS.  511 

certainly  has  a  very  modern  ring  about  it.  Equally  striking  are 
some  of  his  instances  of  single  words,  as,  for  example, 
dYipofioprjtTat,  where  *:ara  has  its  peculiarly  Attic  sense,1  iwic 
in  the  sense  given  to  it  by  Attic  law,2*  dvafaaQai  with  the  mean- 
ing of  '  reckoning,' 3  tdtXovTrjpee,4  KvveTo,5  drip  in  the  sense 
of  'air,'  not,  as  in  Old  Ionic,  of  'mist,'6  aXXore  for  iviore, 
irirov?rj  for  ^td\tc,  at/cwc  for  aetcwc,7  «r/rij3«Cj  a/jtoder,  aarora,6 
Sijffev  for  £?£)j<7£>',9  yewalue  in  the  sense  of  'legitimate,'10 
a'XXotoc,  oaraKig,  ffKonof  '  illegitimate,'  u  CTrifowrat,12  and  iirak- 
££<rt.13  The  use  of  the  old  demonstrative  pronoun  as  an 
article  also  points  to  a  comparatively  late  date,14  and  the  same 
conclusion  may  be  drawn  from  verbal  forms  in  -afar  and  -i'£«i', 
like  7rct7r7ra£eu',  p£TOK\a£eiv,  oti'OTrora^fti',  j^voTafctcand  Bicafcii' 
(which  reminds  us  of  the  Athenian  law-courts),  or  Iparifeiv, 
drifciv,  Ke\T)Ti£ei>',  dXeyifcii',  fttyaXi£e<r6at.la  Perhaps  Mr.  Paley 
goes  too  far  when  he  claims  a  philosophic  origin  for  such 
Homeric  verbs  as  dfpaivtiv,  fetXa/yetv,  yuwpatVftv,  •xaXtiraivt.tv, 
fiapyaii'tir,  opfiaivetr,  Oavfiaiveiv,  /Jiereaiviiv,  KvSaii'tiv,  though 
we  should  have  expected  to  meet  with  them  in  Theophrastus, 
rather  than  in  Old  Ionic  poems  addressed  to  a  popular  audience. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  account  for  this  Attic  colouring.  Some 
of  the  Atticisms  are  probably  due  to  the  belief  of  Aristarchus 
m  the  Attic  birth  of  Homer  ;  indeed,  we  know  that  in  certain 
passages  where  he  adopted  an  Attic  form  the  readings  of  Zeno- 
dotus  were  different.  Others,  again,  may  be  explained  by  early 
errors  on  the  part  of  copyists.  But  the  greater  number  admits 
of  but  one  interpretation.  The  Homeric  poems,  as  we  have 
them,  must  have  passed  through  Attic  hands,  and  undergone  an 
Attic  recension.  Nor  is  this  at  variance  with  what  we  know  of 
their  history.  The  pseudo-Platonic  Hipparchus  ascribes  to 
Hipparchus  a  recension  or  redaction  of  Homer  which  later 
writers,  Cicero,  Josephus  and  Pausanias,  ascribe  to  Peisistra- 

1  //.  2  301.  *  //.  1 148.  »  Od.  y  245. 

«  Od.  3  292.  5  Od.  6  76.  «  //.  E  288. 

7  //.  X  336.  "  //.  K  208,  &c.  •  //.  2  ioo. 

10  //.  E  253.  »  //.  Z  24.  12  //.  *  559.  ls  //.  -V  332. 

14  As  in  //.  T  55,  Z  201,  K  II,  S  IO,  T  320,  *  526,  X  59,  ¥  295. 

15  [The  old  verb  /jLij$i£ew  disproves  this. — M.] 


512 


APPENDIX  A. 


tus.  We  cannot  suppose  that  the  public  library  Peisistratus 
founded  was  without  copies  of  Homer,  or  that  when  one  of  his 
editors  was  convicted  of  altering  and  interpolating  documents 
so  sacred  as  the  Oracles  of  Musseus,1  the  old  epic  literature 
would  have  been  treated  more  reverently.  Solon  is  accused  of 
inserting  certain  passages  in  Homer  in  order  to  glorify  the 
Athenians,  and  this  accusation  of  itself  implies  a  consciousness 
of  the  Attic  origin  of  some  parts  of  the  poems.  It  is  not  im- 
possible that  Mr.  Paley  may  be  right  in  referring  some  of  the 
Atticisms  he  has  enumerated  to  so  late  a  period  as  the  Peri- 
klean  age,  since  it  is  hard  to  see  in  Od.  r\  81  an  allusion  to  any 
other  building  than  the  Erechtheum,  which  was  erected  about 
the  year  432  B.C.  At  any  rate  there  is  plain  proof  that  the  Ho- 
meric poems  underwent  a  process  of  manipulation  in  Attica;  at 
how  late  or  early  a  time  this  process  terminated  must  remain 
undecided. 

It  must  now  be  quite  clear  that  the  language  of  the  poems 
is  an  artificial  one,  a  sort  of  curious  mosaic  in  which  archaisms 
and  modernisms,  fragments  of  ^Eolic,  Attic  and  Ionic  are  em- 
bedded side  by  side.  It  testifies  to  slow  growth  among  guilds 
of  professional  poets  who  received  from  their  predecessors  a 
series  of  stock  subjects,  a  stock  mode  of  treating  them,  and  a 
body  of  traditional  words  and  phrases.  This  fact  is  confirmed 
— though  further  confirmation  is  not  needful — by  the  occur- 
rence in  Homer  of  words  and  forms  which  are  the  product  of 
false  analogy,  and  owe  their  existence  to  the  misinterpretation 
of  the  older  part  of  the  Homeric  language. 

Reference  has  been  already  made  to  some  of  these,  and, 
indeed,  so  numerous  are  the  examples  of  such  erroneous  forma- 
tions in  Homer,  that  it  is  easy  to  find  illustrations  of  them.  In 
some  cases  we  can  actually  see  the  process  of  creation,  as  it 
were,  going  on.  Thus  in  Od.  ?;  95  we  read  :  iv  It  Bpovot 
irtpi  Toi-xpv  epriptSaT  tvda  Kal  trda.  Here  ipfipe^aro  is  a  per- 
fectly normal  Ionic  formation  from  the  root  of  eptiSw  ;  the 
dental  belongs  to  the  root,  and  a:cordingly  appears  in  all  the 
other  tenses  of  the  verb.  But  a  few  lines  before  (86)  we  have 
another  verse,  which  is  evidently  formed  on  the  model  of  the 
1  See  Hdt.  vii.  6. 


FALSE  ANALOGIES.  513 

one  just  quoted,  and  only  differs  from  the  latter  half  of  it  in 
substituting  tA^XecSaro  for  fp/jpt'ciaro.  'EX^Xe'cJaro,  however,  is 
etymologically  and  grammatically  an  impossible  form  ;  the 
present  tense  is  tXuvvw  and  the  root  is  lav,  with  no  trace  of 
either  a  dental  or  a  vowel  e.  The  word,  in  fact,  is  due  to  the 
false  analogy  of  epripelaro  and  the  misunderstanding  of  the 
archaic  pluperfect  form.  In  the  Odyssey,1  again,  we  find  a 
verse  which  can  only  be  explained  as  the  creation  of  false 
analogy.  The  translation,  '  seals,  the  offspring  of  the  sea- 
foam,'  gives  a  radically  wrong  sense  to  both  viiroltq  and 
aXoavlrri.  The  last  word  is  a  compound  of  aXe  and  avlvii,  an 
old  Ionic  feminine,  answering  to  a  Sanskrit  sun-ya  (from  the 
root  su,  'to  beget'),  and  signifying  'daughter'  or  'offspring.' 
The  Sanskrit  sun-ya  (by  the  side  of  the  masculine  sunns,  '  son  ') 
would  have  been  represented  in  Old  Ionic  by  vwyri,  but  iheyod 
after  first  developing  a  dental,  as  is  so  frequently  the  case  in 
Greek,  disappeared,  leaving  ovi-dr),  and  by  metathesis  trvlvij. 
Some  early  '  Homeric  '  verse,  now  lost,  must  have  once  existed 
in  which  the  seals  were  called  viiroltQ  aXdo-uBrcu,  'footless  off- 
spring of  the  sea,'  vtirohs  (or  rather  V^TTO^Q)  *  being  a  com- 
pound of  TTOVQ  and  the  same  negative  that  we  meet  with  in 
j'7jK£jQ?//c  or  the  Latin  nefas.  The  second  part  of  the  epithet, 
however,  came  to  be  misinterpreted  ;  &\offv$yii  was  divided 
into  the  genitive  ctXoe,  and  the  non-existent  vdrr),  which  the 
rhapsodists  connected  with  vfiwp  and  v^nprjg,  and  the  change  of 
meaning  was  complete.  It  only  remained  to  explain  viiroltc, 
which,  now  that  its  substantive  had  been  turned  into  a  genitive, 
necessarily  signified  '  offspring,'  and  this  was  easily  done  by 
referring  it  to  artyioQ.  The  superfluous  dental  did  not  trouble 
the  etymological  consciences  of  the  Homeric  poets.  It  is 
probable  that  this  passage  of  the  Odyssey  was  not  the  only 
place  in  Homeric  literature  in  which  the  mistaken  use  of 
reVocite  occurred,  since  we  find  both  Kallimachus3  and  Theo- 
kritus  4  employing  the  word  in  the  same  sense. 


1  S  404  :  afj.<pl  8e  JJLIV  <p5>Kai  vevoS 

2  The  shortened  form  would  belong  to  the  New  Ionic  period. 

3  d  Kf?os  'TAA/xou  veirovs. 

4  xvii.  25  :  aQdvarot  8e  Ka\evvra  eol  re'iroSes. 

22* 


5i4  APPENDIX  A. 

Two  other  instances  of  false  analogy  may  be  quoted,  which 
will  show  even  more  clearly  the  artificial  character  of  the 
Homeric  dialect.  In  II.  Z  289  the  loss  of  the  digamma 
caused  some  rhapsodist  or  scribe  to  alter  the  original  phrase 
7T£7rXot,  Tra/^TTonaXa  fepya  -yvraLK^v  into  TrtTrXot  Tra/XTreu/aXo*, 
tpya  ywaiK^r,  and  this  corrupt  reading  has  been  imitated  by 
the  author  of  Od.  o  105,  where  we  have  TreVXoi  7raju7ro//a\o«, 
OVQ  Kapev  avr(].  A  similar  blunder  occurs  in  II.  £1  6,  a 
verse,  it  is  fair  to  state,  which  was  rejected  by  Aristophanes  and 
Aristarchus  themselves.  Here  the  impossible  form  arfyorijjra 
originates  in  the  corrupt  reading  of  II.  II  857  and  X  363, 
where  Clemm  has  restored  tSpor/jra  (for  vfporijra  as  ^put//  for 

>  £pwi//). 

Perhaps  one  of  the  oddest  of  these  new  creations  of  the 
Homeric  poets  is  the  adjective  toe,  '  one,'  in  II.  Z  42 2.  *  From 
the  root  aep,  the  Greeks  had  formed  a  numeral  '  one/  which  was 
declined  in  the  nominative  <r«^e,  aefjua,  <re/z.  By  the  ordinary 
phonetic  laws  of  the  language  these  'finally  became  tic,  pia  (for 
<r/Lu'n),  eV,  and  in  epic  /j.la  sometimes  lost  its  initial  consonant 
like  some  other  words  (e.g.  X«/3w,  yaia).  Then  came  the  mis- 
conception of  later  composers.  The  feminine  to  was  supposed 
to  be  an  adjective  declined  like  r/poe,  and  hence  the  monstrous 
lu>  instead  of  kri. 

The  intensive  o\a  has  arisen  in  much  the  same  way.  The 
root  of  E'XOJ  could  never  of  itself  have  passed  into  the  meaning 
given  to  «xa  '>  it  was  only  in  combination  with  e£  (as  in  i&\u) 
that  it  was  able  to  acquire  an  intensive  or  superlative  sense. 
But  there  must  have  been  some  passage  or  passages  in  which 
the  rhapsodists  divided  the  compound  t^o-^a  in  an  incorrect 
way,  assigning  c£  to  the  verb  of  the  sentence  by  supposing 
that  in  the  obsolete  dialect  of  early  Ionia  o-^a  alone  meant 
'  very.'  Hence  the  numerous  passages  in  which  it  is  used 
in  this  sense.  If  Mr.  Paley  is  right,  v-n-ipnopa  *  has  had  a 
similar  origin,  being  formed  after  the  analogy  of  such  Attic 
compounds  as  TrapaXoyoe  or  dmXoyov 

The  same  scholar  has  pointed  out  a  passage  3  in  which  the 

1   ot  nfv  iravres  1$  K(OV  i)/j.ari  "Ai'Sos  efcrw.  2  //.    B  155. 

3  //.  K  466  :  Se'eAov  8'  e'irl  ffrjua  T' 


ARTIFICIAL   FORMS.  515 

adjective  litkov  (=£j?Xoj')  is  used  as  if  it  were  a  substantive 
with  the  meaning  of 'mark.'  This  mistake  could  only  have 
been  made  after  the  contraction  of  the  original  Idikoq  through 
r f'/Aoc  into  the  New  Ionic  oi/Xoe  and  a  forgetfulness  that  the  two 
words  were  really  the  same.1  Another  example  of  the  same 
kind  is  the  use  of  uyyeXirjs,  the  genitive  of  ayytX/iy,  as  a  mas- 
culine nominative  meaning  '  messenger.' 2  A  passage  must  have 
occurred  in  the  traditionary  lays  in  which  the  form  of  the  sen- 
tence rendered  the  blunder  possible,  and  since  the  primitive 
alpha  of  the  termination  had  already  become  eta,  the  passage 
in  question  would  have  been  of  later  date  than  the  separation 
of  the  Attic  dialect  from  the  Ionic  stock.3  Other  instances  of 
similar  blundering  that  may  be  quoted  are  the  confusion  of 
xip>ia,  the  accusative  of  the  substantive  xeV"7c»  w^tn  ^ie  com- 
parative xEi°£'°'a>4  and  the  use  of  TrXe'ee,  'full,'  as 
'  more.' 

Of  a  somewhat  different  character  are  the  false  presents 

uj'wyw,  irftypalb),  &C.  from  the  perfects  elica  (  =  £ouca), 
,  ai'wya,  Tr«f>pa?a,  which  had  come  to  be  employed  in  a 
present  sense,  or  the  false  futures  xpai<rp/<rw,  Ufat 
iviffirjiffu)  formed  from  the  aorist  infinitives 
lr,  7T£7ri0f7v,  EM<j7r£h',  which  were  confounded  with 
the  present  infinitives  of  contracted  verbs  in  -t'w.  The  con- 
traction they  imply  indicates  the  late  date  at  which  they  were 
coined,  and  they  point  to  a  belief  that  the  forms  of  the  Epic 
dialect  were  so  far  removed  from  those  of  the  dialect  of  every- 
day life  as  to  admit  among  them  almost  any  new  coinage  which 
suited  the  metre  and  had  an  archaic  ring. 

1  Ae'fAov  is  the  same  woid  as  the  second  part  of  the  compound  epithet 
«u-SeieA.o9,  where  we  ought  certainly  to  read  ei-SV/eXos.  In  the  latter,  how- 
ever, the  first  syllable  remains  long  by  way  of  compensating  for  the  loss  of 
the  digamma,  whereas  in  St'eAov  it  has  been  shortened  in  accordance  with 
the  usual  habit  of  New  Ionic. 

-  //.  T  206,  N  252,  O  640. 

3  Since  the  Attic  dialect  retains  the  original  alpha. 

4  //.  A  400. 

5  //.    B    129,   A    395  :    r6ffcrot>   tyd>  $1)1*1   irXe'oj  fu.fi.evai    vfos 
Tfduav  •  oltavol  8f  Ttfpl  ir\(fs  i)f  yvvcuKts. 


5i6  APPENDIX  A. 

To  the  same  belief  must  be  ascribed  many  of  the  other 
products  of  false  analogy  in  Homer.  Thus  nineteen  aorist 
infinitives  in  -tm>  which  stand  for  -tyeiv  are  found  in  the 
poems  *  which  are  erroneously  formed  after  the  model  of  the 
uncontracted  present  infinitives  of  verbs  in  -tw.  Curtius  has 
shown  from  a  comparison  of  the  forms  of  the  infinitive  in 
Ionic,  Doric,  and  ^Eolic  that  qiptiv  represents  an  original 
tyept-fei',  which  in  Ionic  became  successively  tyepew  and  (j>ep£ii> 
(for  tyepelr),  so  that  the  first  £  of  the  Homeric  forms  in  -letv  is 
historically  false.2  Thus,  again,  the  futures  avvu  from  ai'vrui,3 
Ejovw,4  and  et'Tovvw,6  are  modelled  upon  the  Atticising  futures  of 
verbal  stems  in  -s,  which  primitively  had  a  double  sigma  in  this 
tense,  afterwards  in  New  Ionic  dropped  one  of  them,  and  finally 
lost  both.  Thus,  too,  the  form  £tc>o7<r0a,6  from  the  root  da,  is  a 
mere  imitation  of  olada  for  old-da  from  the  root  vidt  the  sibilant 
being  erroneously  imagined  to  be  part  of  the  second  person 
ending  in  the  archaic  Epic  dialect;7  the  compounds  Waiytrric,6 
yi/rai/iaj'j/c,9  are  due  to  the  analogy  of  Qvfiaiyevfa,  where  alone 
the  locative  Qqpai  is  right ;  and  the  so-called  diectasis  or 
resolution  of  vowels,  which  is  so  frequently  resorted  to  for  help- 
ing out  the  metre,  has  been  proved  by  Mangold  and  Wacker- 
nagel  to  be  the  result  of  an  affected  archaism.  'EXowo-t,  for 
example,  in  //.  N  315,  Od.  17  319,  is  a  false  resolution  of  the 
contracted  eXwo-i  of  Herodotus,  KPE/J.OV,  in  //.  II  83,  of  the 
Kpepw^ey  which  we  find  in  the  Plutus™  of  Aristophanes.  Forms 
like  yavomaat,  >//3wojT££,  opo^re,  yoowrra,  atrtowiro,  dXdw,  Trpw- 
orec  and  0owKoe  are  grammatically  and  phonetically  impos- 
sible. According  to  the  phonetic  laws  of  the  Ionic  dialect,  the 
middle  stage  between  opaw  and  vpw  is  opiw,  not  bpow,  and  the 
theory  of  an  assimilation  of  the  vowels  is  set  aside  by  the  in- 
variable usage  of  Ionic  authors  and  of  the  Epic  dialect  itself, 

1  E.g.  //.  B  228,  A  263,  2  511,  T  15,  *  467,  n  608  ;   Od.  a.  59,  6349, 
137,  \  232,  M  446,  T  477,  x  426. 

2  The  infinitive  in  -eeij/  is  found  thrice  in  Hesiod's  Shield ;  never  in  the 
Works  and  Days,  or  in  the  elegiac  writers. 

3  //.  A  56,  A  365.  «  //.  A  454,  O  352,  X  67. 

6  Od.  <f>  97,  127,  174.  s  //_  T  270 

7  Similarly  we  find  exe«r0o  and  <J>Du«<r0a  in  Sappho,  which  made  the 
grammarians  fancy  the  form  to  be  an  yEolic  one. 

8  Od.  $203.  »  //.  r39.  10  v.  3I2. 


LICENSE  IN  SCANSION.  517 

except  in  the  limited  number  of  cases  under  consideration. 
Moreover,  ov  and  rj  could  not  become  w,  much  less  could  o  do 
so.  The  whole  set  of  forms  is  the  creation  of  rhapsodists  and 
scribes  endeavouring  to  restore  the  metre  of  lines  which  the 
contraction  of  two  short  syllables,  the  loss  of  the  digamma,  or 
the  decay  of  some  other  peculiarity  of  early  pronunciation,  had 
violated,  and  who  looked  for  the  means  of  effecting  this  to  the 
supposed  analogy  of  other  old  words. 

If  further  proof  is  wanted  of  the  artificial  nature  of  the 
Homeric  dialect,  it  would  be  found  in  two  facts.  The  first  of 
these  is  that  the  parallel  forms  of  various  date  and  origin  which 
coexist  in  the  poems  are  generally  of  different  metrical  quantity, 
and  accordingly  highly  convenient  for  the  verse-maker's  pur- 
poses. Thus  the  yEolic  tppevai  serves  as  a  dactyl,  eperai  as 
an  anapaest,  t/jp£i>  as  a  trochee,  spiv  as  a  pyrrhic,  and  dvai  as  a 
spondee,  and  it  is  plainly  metrical  necessities  that  have  pre- 
served the  ^Eolic  forms  of  the  personal  pronouns.  The  second 
fact  is  that  short  syllables  are  lengthened  where  too  many  come 
together  to  allow  the  word  in  which  they  occur  to  be  otherwise 
used  in  the  hexameter.  Hence  it  is  that  the  first  syllable  of 
is  always  long,  that  v^rjpefytoQ  is  the  genitive  of 
?/c,  that  aop  has  a  in  dissyllabic  forms  and  a  in  trisyllabic 
ones,  and  that  we  find  indifferently  aVeipeVioe  and 
filXavt  and  jue/Xavu1  Hence,  too,  we  find  Kvavoc, 
and  Kvavwirig,  but  Kvaveog,  KvuvoTre^a,  Kvn  voirnrXoc,  and  KVCLVO- 


The  long  vowels  and  diphthongs  by  which  the  lengthened 
quantity  of  these  naturally  short  syllables  is  pointed  out  in 
writing  are  due  to  the  scribes,  and  are  probably  of  late  date. 
How  modern  the  manuscripts  were  which  Aristarchus  had 
before  him  is  shown,  as  Giese  has  remarked,  by  his  uncertainty 
regarding  the  insertion  of  the  aspirate  except  where  it  was  indi- 
cated by  an  elision.  The  alterations  made  in  the  text  by  the 
scribes  both  of  the  Alexandrine  and  of  an  earlier  period  were 
numerous  and  sometimes  revolutionary.  No  doubt  of  this  can 

1  //.  n  79. 

2  So,   also,    ffvfloffla  (Od.    |   IOl),    'airovfeaQai,   rjirepo-irevca    (Sanskrit 
apara),  r)ve/j.6ets,  Si-rjveK-fis,   fl\driyos,  06/xeiA.ia  (//.  ¥  255),  tlav6s  (//.  II  9), 

(Od.  u  2l8),  flaptvAs,  elpefflri,  'aKd/jLaros,  &c. 


5i8  APPENDIX  A. 

remain  after  the  labours  of  Nauck,  Cobet,  and  Wackernagel. 
The  hiatus  caused  by  the  loss  of  the  digamma  was  mended  in 
various  ways.  Sometimes  p'  is  inserted,1  sometimes  r',2  some- 
times T£,3  sometimes  c',4  sometimes  y  or  ye,5  sometimes  K'.* 
At  other  times  the  plural  takes  the  place  of  the  dual  (as  II.  Y 
371,  372,  for  x£'(°c  fffoiKf),  or  the  vocative  the  place  of  the 
nominative  used  vocatively,  as  in  II.  T  277.7  New  forms, 
again,  are  substituted  for  older  ones,  as  in  II.  N  107,  where 
Zenodotus  and  Aristophanes  preserve  the  older  reading  vvv  ce 
fkaQ  iroXiog  corrupted  into  vvv  S"  cuadcr  TroXtog  in  the  MSS.  of 
Aristarchus,  and  the  words  of  a  verse  may  even  be  transposed 
or  changed,  as  when8  OT>)  &  irapoiff  Itrniav  fcfitgxtpevGc  is  turned 
into  orT]  %'  ITTTTWJ/  TrpoirapotOt'  SfciffKOfitvoG  or  roiovfa  f&ov  into 
TOIOVTOV  'i$ov.9  A  frequent  source  of  error  has  been  the  con- 
traction of  short  syllables  during  the  age  of  Attic  influence, 
resulting  in  various  corruptions  of  the  text  in  order  to  restore 
the  violated  metre.  Equally  frequent  has  been  the  misreading 
of  the  older  MSS.  in  which  E  represented  both  7;  and  ft  as  well 
as  e,  and  O  w  and  ov  as  well  as  o.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  it  is  often  far  from  easy  to  distinguish  false  forms  which 
have  arisen  from  the  mistakes  of  the  later  copyists  and  critics 
from  those  which  belonged  to  the  older  period  of  oral  recita- 
tion. In  many  cases  we  shall  never  be  able  to  determine  with 
accuracy  whether  we  are  dealing  with  a  corruption  of  the 
written  text  or  with  a  product  of  the  age  before  the  poems 
were  first  written  down. 

About  one  point,  however,  there  need  be  no  hesitation. 
Throughout  the  whole  of  Homer  words  which  in  Doric  have  K 
from  an  original  kw  (Latin  qu}  appear  with  TT,  never  K.  Thus 
we  find  OTTWC,  TTWC,  vov,  Tcol,  &c.  Yet  we  know  from  both  in- 
scriptions and  the  MSS.  of  Kallinos,  Mimnermus,  and  He- 

1  //.  B  342,  A  467  ;  Od.  6  321.       2  //.  E  467,  E  348  ;   Od.  $  401,  ty  8. 

3  //.  I  379,  M  162  ;  Od.  a.  41,  o  507. 

4  //.  A  509,  A  792,   M  412,   O  403  ;   Od.  0  332,   7  2l6,   8  556,  \  442. 
s  //.  A  548  ;   Ott.all3,<r  233.  •  //.  A  64,  T  250. 

7  An  instance  is  quoted  by  Hoffmann  from  II.  B  8,  where  for  oSAe 
ovfipe  we  should  read  oSAos. 

8  Od.  o  150.  9  Q 


THE   QUESTION  OF  SINGLE  AUTHORSHIP.    519 

rodotus,  that  the  New  Ionic  still  preserved  the  older  K  up  to 
the  fourth  century  B.C.  It  is  difficult  to  ascribe  the  change  of 
spelling  to  the  Atticising  influence  discussed  above,  since  the 
latter  would  not  well  explain  the  thoroughness  with  which  the 
change  has  been  carried  out  The  change  is  rather  the  work 
of  the  copyists  of  a  later  day,  influenced,  no  doubt,  by  the 
theory  that  Homer  was  of  Attic  birth.  Quite  parallel  is  the 
appearance  of  an  aspirated  letter  in  many  words  which  retained 
the  simple  tenuis  in  the  Ionic  of  Herodotus  and  the  inscrip- 
tions. An  instance  of  this  is  ^l-^o^ai  in  the  place  of  £e'co/*a(. 

The  conclusions  to  be  derived  from  a  close  examination  of 
the  language  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  make  it  almost 
superfluous  to  refer  to  the  question  whether  these  two  works 
were  the  production  of  one  author  or  of  two.  Since,  however, 
the  question  is  even  now  keenly  debated,  it  is  as  well  to  see 
what  light  can  be  thrown  upon  it  by  the  language  of  the  poems. 
Though  this  has  shown  us  that  the  national  Epic  of  ancient 
Greece,  like  the  national  Epics  of  all  other  peoples — the  Maha- 
bharata  of  India,  the  Edda  of  Scandinavia,  the  Nibelungen  Lied 
of  Germany,  the  Kalevala  of  the  Finns — grew  up  slowly  and 
gradually,  passing  through  the  mouths  of  numberless  genera- 
tions and  schools  of  poets  and  reciters,  and  assuming  new 
forms  among  each  ;  nevertheless  there  must  have  been  definite 
individuals  to  whom  the  arrangement  and  grouping  of  this 
traditional  matter  was  due,  to  whom,  in  fact,  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,  the  Thebais  and  the  Kypria,  the  Lesser  Iliad  and  the 
other  specimens  of  Epic  literature,  as  separate  poems,  owed 
their  origin.  We  know  that  the  last  line  of  the  Iliad  is  but  the 
protasis  of  which  the  first  line  of  the  yEthiopis  formed  the 
apodosis,  and  that  the  poet  of  the  Odyssey '  appeals  to  the 
Muses  to  relate  to  him  '  also '  as  to  others  who  had  gone  before 
the  adventures  of  the  Greek  heroes  on  their  return  from  Troy. 
It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  some  principle  was  adopted  in  cutting 
off  one  portion  of  the  mass  of  Epic  matter  from  another,  in 
throwing  it,  that  is  to  say,  into  the  shape  of  a  single  indepen- 
dent poem.  But  a  merely  superficial  reading  will  convince 
most  people  that  there  is  a  very  decided  difference  of  tone  and 

1  o.  10,     The  neglect  of  the  digamma  in  this  line  should  be  noted. 


520 


APPENDIX  A. 


manner  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  that  the  Odyssey 
is  a  much  more  artificial  composition  than  the  Iliad,  and 
breathes  the  spirit  of  a  more  modern  age.  And  this  impression 
is  borne  out  by  differences  in  the  language  of  the  two  poems. 
There  are  about  130  words  found  only  in  the  Iliad,  and  about 
120  found  only  in  the  Odyssey,  and  among  the  latter  occur  not 
only  abstract  nouns  like  aTrippa,  XP^°»  WH*  «pi0/*»e»  fVV?> 
Krijpa,1  but  words  which  denote  a  distinct  advance  in  wealth 
and  luxury,  such  as  ^rjpiovp-yoc,  Ha^oiva,  KOITIJ,  ^\£Krpov.  The 
usage  of  certain  words,  too,  differs  in  the  two  poems,  implying 
that  a  different  hand  has  manipulated  the  old  traditionary 
materials  in  the  two  cases.  Thus  different  epithets  are  em- 
ployed for  the  same  object,  or,  what  is  more  significant,  the 
same  epithet  is  employed  in  different  senses.  Aat^wi/  and 
('jXootypwv,  for  instance,  are  'baleful '  in  the  Iliad,  'crafty'  in  the 
Odyssey,  tvKVK\og  is  used  only  of  the  shield  with  the  meaning 
of '  round '  in  the  Iliad,  of  the  chariot  with  the  meaning  of 
'  well-wheeled '  in  the  Odyssey.  Similarly  flovXtyopog  is  an 
epithet  of  princes  in  the  Iliad,  of  the  dyopa  in  the  more  demo- 
cratic Odyssey.  So,  too,  the  same  word  has  different  significa- 
tions. In  the  Iliad  K\elg  is  '  a  collar-bone '  ;  faarrip  '  a  warrior's 
belt ' ;  wTu\i],  '  a  wound '  ;  //ye/uwr,  '  a  guide ' ;  /-/wXoe,  '  the  moil 
of  war' ;  epic,  'the  battle-strife' ;  xaXlw,  'to  call' ;  KOO-/HEW,  'to 
marshal.'  In  the  Odyssey  the  same  words  mean  '  key,'  '  swine- 
herd's belt,'  '  scar,'  '  chief,'  '  struggle,'  '  rivalry,'  '  invite,'  and  '  to 
set  huntsmen  ' ;  the  accusative  of  cptg  in  the  latter  poem  being 
the  analogic  epiv  of  the  Attic  dialect.  Differences,  again, 
appear  in  the  use  even  of  words  like  t^oTriW,  which  always 
denotes  place  in  the  Iliad,  time  in  the  Odyssey,  or  in  the  expres- 
sion of  an  idea  like  that  of  the  preposition  'by  means  of,' 
which  is  represented  by  IKI\TI  in  the  Iliad,  by  lor^n  in  the 
Odyssey.  It  is,  perhaps,  of  little  moment  that  the  later 
analogic  comparative  of  <pi\oc,  ^t'Xrepoe,  is  found  only  in  the 
Iliad,  <f>t\itav  being  alone  employed  in  the  Odyssey ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  cannot  overlook  the  significance  of  the 
fact  that  the  contracted  form  of  irapa,  Trap,  occurs  only  before 

1  So  otfcojua,  which  frequently  appears  in  the  Odyssey,  is  found  only 
twice  in  the  Iliad  (r  235,  P  260). 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  NAME    HOMER.  521 

the  letters  y,  £,  I,  <r  and  r  in  the  Iliad,  and  only  before  K  and  p. 
in  the  Odyssey.  We  seem  here  referred  to  a  difference  of 
usage  on  the  part  of  the  poet  or  redactor,  or  whatever  else  we 
choose  to  term  him,  which  points  further  to  a  difference  of 
personality.  Whether  or  not,  however,  the  author  of  the  Iliad 
and  of  the  Odyssey  was  one  and  the  same  individual  is  of  small 
consequence ;  in  any  case  he  has  been  proved  by  the  sure 
evidence  of  philology  to  have  been  but  the  inheritor  of  other 
men's  labours,  and,  like  Castren  and  Lonnrott  in  our  own  age, 
to  have  worked  up  the  materials  provided  by  the  spirit  and 
genius  of  a  whole  nation.  It  was  to  this  spirit  and  genius  that 
the  old  Epic  of  Greece  was  due,  and  rightly,  therefore,  was  its 
creation  named  Homeros,  '  the  fitted  together.' l 

1  "Ourjpos  is  actually  used  with  this  sense  by  Euripides  (Ale.  870),  who 
applies  it  to  the  marriage  bond.  The  form  of  the  name,  and  probably  its 
origin  also,  is  Ionic.  The  word  is  first  found  in  a  doubtful  fragment  (xxxiv.) 
of  Hesiod.  The  statement  of  the  pseudo-Herodotean  Life  of  Homer  that 
the  word  signified  'blind'  in  the  Cumsean  dialect  must  be  a  pure  fiction. 
G.  Curtius  and  Angermann  take  a  slightly  different  view  of  the  original 
use  of  the  word  from  that  adopted  in  the  text.  The  former  says  : — '  Sic 
fere  nomen  Homeri  esse  existimaverim,  nt  primum  poetae  inter  se  con- 
juncti  et  apti  o/njpot  vocati  sint,  ii  deinde  gentis  sodalitio  inito  patronymi- 
cum  'OyUTjpt'Soj  nomen  acceperint,  postea  vero  ex  civilium  gentium  more 
eponymus  quidam  inventus  sit"O/uTj/?oy,  qui  gentis  potius  quam  suam  per- 
sonam  sustineret.  Nam  similem  sane  in  modum  qui  a  cantu  efyoXiroi 
vocati  erant  facti  sunt  Evfj.o\iriSai,  Eumolpidarum  autem  auctor  inventus 
est  Eumolpus.  Fiet  igitur  Homerus  nobis  auctor  vel  eponymus  poetarum 
gentilicia  communione  inter  se  coryMnctorvimAhnherrderSdngerinmtngen.' 
So  Angermann  : — '  Eodem  modo  'Ofj.rjp(Sat  nomen  sodalitium  TU>V  d^poiv 
(i.e.  poetarum  conjunctorum)  significare,  et"O/j.ripov  poetam  ex  ipsa  patrony- 
mica  forma  fictum  esse  verisimillimum  est.' 


APPENDIX  B. 


ON    THE    DATE    OF    THE    ODYSSEY. 

IT  occurs  to  me  that  I  ought  to  say  something  in  answer  to  a 
natural  objection  which  may  be  made  against  the  recent  date 
assigned  to  the  Odyssey  in  this  volume.  If  this  poem  did  not 
receive  its  present  form  till  near  700  B.C.,  how  is  it  possible  to 
account  for  its  vague  and  fabulous  notions  about  the  geography 
of  the  West  ?  For  if  Syracuse  and  Naxos  and  Catana,  and 
many  other  flourishing  Greek  cities,  were  founded  from  735 
B.C.  onward,  surely  the  fables  of  Polyphemus,  of  the  oxen  of 
the  sun,  of  Scylla  and  Charybdis,  and  the  like,  must  have  been 
then  already  long  exploded.  . 

My  answer  to  this  objection  is  twofold.  In  the  first  place, 
recent  researches  have  shown  the  geography  of  the  Odyssey, 
not  only  as  regards  the  West,  but  as  regards  the  very  home  of 
Odysseus,  to  be  so  vague  and  inaccurate,  that  we  must  regard 
it  as  consciously  imaginary  in  the  poet's  mind.  He  was  no 
primitive  bard  painting  facts  so  far  as  he  knew  them  accurately, 
and  filling  in  the  rest  from  his  imagination  and  from  legend, 
but  a  deliberate  romancer,  who  did  not  care  to  reproduce  tame 
reality,  even  where  he  could  have  easily  ascertained  it  I 
know  that  some  leading  scholars,  like  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Dr. 
Schliemann,  will  not  agree  with  me,  but  I  will  merely  refer 
the  reader  to  the  latest  and  ablest  survey  of  Homeric  geography 
in  Mr.  Bunbury's  Geography  of  the  Ancients  (especially  vol.  i. 
ch.  iii.  §  3),  where  he  will  see  my  statement  amply  corroborated. 
Not  even  Ithaca,  not  even  the  Ionian  islands,  not  even  the 
neighbouring  coasts  are  described  with  any  approach  to  their 


GEOGRAPHY  OF  THE   ODYSSEY.  523 

real  features.  When  Telemachus  is  described  starting  in  a 
chariot  from  Pylos,  and  driving  in  a  day  to  Sparta  with  his 
companion,1  the  poet  leaves  us  to  imagine  either  a  smooth 
plain,  or  an  easy  high  road  along  which  horses  can  gallop. 
Anyone  who  has  seen  the  country  between  the  two  places  will 
know  how  utterly  absurd  this  notion  is.  And  are  we  to  imagine 
any  high  roads  at  all  through  the  gorges  and  denies  of  Messene 
and  of  Laconia  ?  At  no  period  of  Greek  history  down  to  the 
present  day  was  such  a  journey  possible.  It  follows  that  we 
cannot  infer  the  historical  or  geographical  knowledge  of  this 
age  from  a  poet  who  deliberately  drew  his  pictures,  even  of 
Greece,  from  fancy,  and  not  from  observation. 

It  is  therefore  likely  that  this  geographical  vagueness  was 
the  result  of  intentional  archaicising,  of  an  affected  ignorance, 
by  the  clever  rhapsodist.  If  it  had  been  confined  to  the  far 
West,  and  then  only  could  we  explain  it  by  the  antiquity  of  the 
poet  and  the  narrow  horizon  of  his  geographical  knowledge. 

But  even  if  this  were  not  so,  I  could  meet  the  objection  in 
another  way.  The  received  dates  for  the  foundation  of  the 
Greek  colonies  are  all  derived  from  Sicilian  Archcelogia  of 
Thucydides  at  the  opening  of  his  sixth  book.  All  these  dates 
were  evidently  borrowed  from  Antiochus  of  Syracuse,  and  we 
need  not  extend  •  to  this  old  logographer  the  superstitious 
reverence  generally  accorded  to  every  statement  of  Thucydides. 
I  hope  to  show  more  fully  in  Hermathena  that  Dionysius 
probably  composed  his  history  for  the  purpose  of  glorifying  his 
native  Syracuse,  then  the  leading  city  among  all  the  western 
Hellenic  colonies.  He  was  prevented  by  the  ancient  temple 
of  Apollo  Archegetes  at  Naxos,  and  the  customs  attached  to  it, 
from  asserting  the  greater  antiquity  of  Syracuse  to  this  town, 
but  he  placed  his  native  city  next,  and  by  the  smallest  possible 
interval,  and  then  dated  all  the  other  colonies  with  reference  to 
Syracuse  as  really  the  capital  of  Sicily.  This  is  manifest  from 
Thucydides'  account. 

But  how  did  Antiochus  fix  the  date  of  the  founding  of 
Syracuse?  Surely  by  no  careful  reasoning  backward  from 
later  and  clearer  history,  by  no  examination  of  existing  records, 

1  7  491,  sq. 


524  APPENDIX  B. 

but  rather  by  reasoning  downward  from  an  assumed  date  of 
Heracles  to  Archias  the  founder,  who  was  the  eleventh  in  de- 
scent from  that  hero.  This  would  give  330  years  from  Heracles 
to  Archias'  maturity.  But  we  cannot  now  tell  what  scheme 
of  mythical  history  was  adopted  in  this  early  work. 

Starting,  I  believe,  from  this  d  priori  determination,  Antio- 
chus  seems  to  have  reversed  the  natural  history  of  Greek  coloni- 
sation in  the  West,  for  the  sake  of  glorifying  Syracuse.  Other 
legends  tell  of  Archias  helping  the  founder  of  Corcyra ;  they 
tell  of  his  helping,  on  his  way  to  Sicily,  the  Greek  settlers  in 
southern  Italy.1  Surely  this  indicates  what  really  happened. 
Greek  settlers  first  occupied  Corcyra,  then  they  pushed  on  to 
Italy,  and,  avoiding  the  barren  shore  north  of  Otranto,  found 
rich  plains  about  the  Liris,  of  which  Archilochus  speaks  (I  think) 
as  of  new  discoveries.  Thence  they  found  their  way  to  Sicily. 
I  do  not  believe  that  this  latter  island  was  colonised  till  after 
700  B.C.,  and  that  the  whole  Sicilian  chronology  found  in  all 
our  Greek  histories  rests  on  the  imaginary  basis  laid  down  by 
Antiochus. 

In  order  to  bring  my  history  of  the  Homeric  question  up  to 
the  present  date,  I  here  add  that  Kirchhoff's  text  of  the  Odyssey 
and  his  critical  essays  have  just  appeared  in  a  new  and  more 
complete  form  (die  homerische  Odyssee,  2nd  ed.,  Berlin,  1879). 
In  the  preface  to  this  book  Kirchhoif  sums  up  briefly  the  leading 
points  of  his  theory,  which  is  here  more  definitely  stated  than  in 
his  previous  essays.  He  holds  our  Odyssey  to  be  made  up  (i) 
of  the  old  ATostos  of  Odysseus,2  composed  at  a  very  early  date, 
complete  in  itself,  and  of  the  highest  poetic  merit,  but  composed 
when  epic  composition  was  already  at  its  zenith,  and  far  from 
its  rude  beginnings.  (2)  An  early  continuation  of  this  Nostos 
by  a  later  poet,  but  still  before  the  first  Olympiad  in  date.  This 
poet  sang  the  adventures  of  Odysseus  after  his  return,3  embody- 
ing in  his  work  many  shorter  lays  which  we  cannot  now  sever. 
That  this  poet  was  not  identical  with  the  composer  of  the 
Nostos,  Kirchhoff  infers  with  perfect  confidence 4  from  the  fact 
that  in  poetical  merit  he  is  far  beneath  him.  Aus  diesem  filr 

1  Cf.  Muller,  FHG.  i.  p.  183.  2  a-v  184. 

3  v  i82-4<  296.  «  p.  496 


KIRCHHOFFS    ODYSSEY.  525 

sich  allein  vollig  durchschlagenden  Grunde  ist  es  ganz  unmbg- 
lich  Identitdt  der  Verfasser  anzunehmen.  (3)  But  anyone  who 
looks  into  these  separately  printed  divisions  of  Kirchhoff's  text 
will  notice  long  passages  in  a  smaller  type.  These  are  due  to 
the  later  redaction  of  the  poem,  about  Ol.  30,  by  a  person  of  no 
poetic  power,  who  expanded  the  earlier  work,  and  in  his  day 
combined  the  whole  with  all  manner  of  needless  and  disturbing 
interpolations. 

The  reader  will  easily  see  how  far  I  am  disposed  to  agree 
with  this  definite  theory.  I  am  unable  to  feel  the  decided 
inferiority  of  the  second  poet,  and  I  see  no  evidence  that  he 
must  have  lived  before  776  B.C.  But  in  holding  a  conscious 
combination  of  larger  unities  by  a  poet  artist  in  the  eighth  cen- 
tury, Kirchhoff  seems  to  me  correct.  How  far  the  redactor  of  the 
thirtieth  Olympiad  is  necessary  cannot  be  determined  without 
an  intricate  discussion.  The  usual  German  feature  of  settling 
antiquity,  and  denying  identity,  according  to  subjective  notions 
as  to  poetic  merit,  has  not  diminished  in  KirchhofFs  now  long- 
matured  views. 


END    OF  THE   FIRST   VOLUME. 


PROPERTY 


ST.    LOUIS 


